Stool of Penance
by lonaj
Summary: NOW COMPLETE! M&R story. Roxton disappears and a strange wolf comes to the Treehouse.
1. Stool of Penance

TITLE:  Stool of Penance

CATEGORY:  Angst?

MAIN CHARACTERS:  Roxton and Marguerite

SPOILERS:  Minor spoilers for several episodes.  I haven't seen all of them, so I've probably put my foot in it several times.

RATING:  After some thought, I've decided to rate it "R."  This is due to some violence and some sex.

DISCLAIMER:  I'm only playing with them, Sir Arthur and Mr. New Line.  Honest.  I'll put them back just the way they were.

That's done it!  Stool of penance!  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Through the coarse ruff of black fur, Marguerite's fingers massaged the neck of the dire wolf curled up at her side.  The canine's body felt warmly alive.  Just now Marguerite needed a living thing close to her that wouldn't talk about Roxton or bring him to mind in any way.

And there was nothing more different from the tall, smooth-skinned Roxton than this furry wolf.  Roxton's manners had been rough and he'd always needed a shave, but his chest had been as hairless as a baby's bottom.

Burying her face in thick fur, Marguerite thought of the times she'd seen Roxton with his shirt off.  He hadn't been the least shy about displaying his body.  Rather the opposite, stripping down at any polite opportunity.  Marguerite closed her eyes and evoked one of the mnemonic mantras she'd learned in MI5 during the war.  A moving picture of memories began to play in her head:  Roxton chopping wood, Roxton washing up, Roxton shaving.  Marguerite tightened her hold on the wolf's neck.  It whined and chuffed what sounded like a concerned question.  _Are you okay there, Marguerite?_

Believing the great white hunter could protect himself, they, the four of them, Roxton's so-called friends, had waited too long to track him down.  Last night he'd left the tree house like an enraged T-Rex.  Shrugging into his bandoleer, he'd stormed the elevator and slammed it into motion with a swipe powerful enough to break a steel bar – if there'd been one within a thousand miles.  Then, as the water sloshed through the bamboo pipes and the elevator ropes squeaked, he'd turned his back on Marguerite and the rest of them.

Challenger had shaken his head and returned to his laboratory without comment.  Veronica had stalked off to her sleeping porch.  That had left Marguerite and Malone staring at each other, Marguerite defiant, Malone with his mouth twisted both in pain and disgust.

None of them had thought to follow Roxton.  Not until morning and that had been much too late.  Veronica had judged from the dried blood on his clothes that Roxton'd died around 2 a.m.  "Probably a small raptor," she'd said kicking at the machete that lay in the tattered and blood-spattered dirt.  A swarm of feeding flies flew up like a damned soul then settled quickly back.  "The spoor's a bit odd, though.  Must've been limping."  Veronica picked up the bloody machete and waved at some marks to her left in the open space between them and the plateau's brink, about fifty feet away.  "There are scuffs all over the area.  I'd say Roxton had it down, fighting, rolling in the dirt.  Maybe he lamed it."  Yes, of course, Marguerite could just picture Roxton killing a raptor in hand-to-claw combat.  His pistols had been holstered and he'd left the rifles behind.  The heavy machete made a terrible in-fighting knife.  Roxton's friends had arrived much, much too late.

They hadn't really found Roxton's actual body.  There'd been nothing left to find, not even a well-gnawed bone, just blood and tantalizing bits of his life.  An optimist might think Roxton had stripped to the skin then ripped his clothes to bloody shreds.  No one volunteered this possibility, not even the irrepressibly buoyant Malone.

Marguerite shifted to look at Challenger over by the fire, laying out the bundle he'd carried away -- a pair of blood-soaked boots, the machete, Roxton's bandoleer and braces and several handfuls of brown-stained cotton twill.  The ivory-handled butts of Roxton's two pistols hung out over Challenger's belt.  The professor's feathery flag of ginger hair waved in a slight breeze as he bent over to study his arrangement.  That was how Challenger coped.  He turned his grief into scientific theorem.

And how would Marguerite cope?  More diamonds for her cache?  A few gold nuggets perhaps?  She had plenty of both.  Marguerite made a quiet sound that only the wolf's keen hearing detected.  It sat up on its rump, whined again and licked her face with a rough, moist tongue.

The mysterious wolf.  For God's sake, obviously someone's pet, but she'd never seen anything like him in the Zanga village, or for that matter any of the other odd communities on the plateau.

Veronica had taken the protective rear-guard position, Roxton's usual place, when they finally left the plateau's edge and turned for home.  It was a measure of Veronica's grief that she hadn't heard the raptors approach.  Surrounding the party in seconds, one already had Challenger down on the ground while Malone and Marguerite were still trying to bring up their rifles.  "Run for a tree!" Veronica had screamed, and knife in hand jumped for the nearest raptor's back.

The wolf had come out of nowhere.  After slashing the throat out of Challenger's captor, it pivoted and snapped the neck of Veronica's steed with a single bite behind its head then on it went to the next attacker.  Although Marguerite could have sworn she'd seen several raptor kicks connect, the wolf seemed untouched.  No cuts or blood marked the thick coat that ran through her fingers.

The wolf had saved all of them, all of them except Roxton.  Roxton had already been dead.  He'd been a smooth man and now he was dead.

Malone squatted next to Marguerite, holding out on a stick a campfire-seared cutlet of tree rat, a rodent-like creature resembling both possum and chameleon and tasting much worse than either.  Knowing how much she hated it, Roxton had never stocked the larder with tree rat even though it was slow-moving and easy to bring down.  Malone had apparently forgotten her distaste.  She pushed it away.  "Marguerite, you have to eat.  Neither Challenger nor I can carry you very far."  He offered the meat again, lifting his right eyebrow in gentle appeal.

Because Malone's left eye was swollen half shut, that brow stayed scrunched down.  The shiner looked really painful tonight.  Roxton must've bruised his knuckles with that one.

Malone probably carried a big load guilt around on those conscientious shoulders, but it wasn't his fault.  Early yesterday morning Roxton had marched into Marguerite's bedroom and tossed a huge armful of smelly clothes on her bed.  "Laundry day, Miss Krux!  Up and about!"  Who was milord John to assign her work?  She'd be damned if she'd wash Malone's drawers or Challenger's socks.  His lordship had been begging for a very special set down, and Marguerite had been just the woman to deliver it.  Malone had only been her unwitting tool.

It'd been her trick that drove Roxton from the tree house.  She'd killed Roxton, no one else.

Marguerite's half-open eyes considered the revolting, smoking flesh Malone offered.  "You won't have to carry me, Ned.  I promise you that.  No one has to carry Marguerite Krux."  She raised a hand, took the stick and, shifting a little, offered the meat to the animal lying at her side.  "But I think that our friend here deserves first share, don't you?"

Veronica had left Challenger at the fire to join Malone.  Standing behind him, she exclaimed, "Marguerite, don't!  It might …"  Malone raised a hand to stop her words, and they all watched the black wolf's enormous head lift and its eyes, so oddly light against the black fur, look steadily at the meat.  It made no move to take it.

After the last dinosaur fell, Challenger had tried to frighten the wolf away by firing a rifle into the air.  The wolf had saved him, and he didn't want to kill it, but a predator was a predator and they'd all just seen this one kill three raptors.  The wolf didn't even flinch at the sharp reports.  Malone, doubtless with his werewolf experience in mind, threatened it with a sturdy sharp piece of wood.  The wolf answered that by barking, bounding about and wagging its bushy tail.  Veronica said, "Ned, don't be ridiculous.  It's probably just someone's pet.  Not every wolf is a werewolf."

The wolf's tongue hung out and it panted like a happy idiot.  Gingerly offering it a hand to sniff, Challenger launched into an analysis of its phylum, genus and species.  A dire wolf, he'd said, a creature of the Ice Age.

When they started walking again, it ranged with them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, but always returning to pace by Marguerite, licking her hand, nudging her hip, twice dropping sticks in front of her, obviously offering a game of fetch.  Silly dog.  Silly Bruiser.

"No?  Not hungry, huh?  Or is it Veronica's cooking?  Well, even our little jungle chef has her limitations.  There's only so much you can do with tree rat, and I think tonight she's done it all."

Veronica's tanned hand tightened a little where it rested on Malone's shoulder.  Marguerite caught the motion out of the corner of her eye.  Her lips stretched out into a thin line.  What was bothering Veronica?  Malone was alive and breathing the warm night air.  The boy was alive; the man had died.

Malone still squatted beside her, the same imploring look on his face.  Roxton wouldn't have tiptoed around her so delicately.  He would have teased, bullied or even force-fed Marguerite the abominable tree rat.  But Roxton was dead and they'd sent Malone.  _Shouldn't send a boy to do a man's job, _Marguerite thought.  _In fact, if you can't send the man, don't send anyone at all.  Not to little Marguerite.  She doesn't need anyone.  So just leave her alone tonight, huh, please?  She's got Bruiser to talk to.  Not a brilliant conversationalist, but he says plenty enough._

Over by the fire Challenger harrumphed.  He'd been watching their little farce, his face hanging in tired folds.  Of all the adventurers, he'd depended on Roxton the most.  Ever since the Challenger expedition had left London, Roxton had been its shield against the darkness, never once laying that burden down until death took it from him.  Now the full responsibility for everyone's welfare fell squarely back on Challenger's scholarly shoulders.  From where Marguerite reclined on the jungle floor, leaning against Bruiser's warm body, the burden looked heavy indeed.

Challenger worried about her.  Well, he didn't need to.  They all expected Marguerite Krux to turn into a puddle of tears.  To give up.  Well, she'd show them.  She'd eat this damn, stinking piece of meat.  White teeth sunk into the tidbit on the stick and with some difficulty Marguerite ripped off a bite.  She began to chew in determined grinds.  She'd show them, she'd even show Roxton.  He'd …  no, no, he wouldn't.  Marguerite focused on chewing and tried not to think at all.

"Good heavens!" I cried.  "Then you think the beast was – Why, Charing Cross station would hardly make a kennel for such a brute!"

_"Apart from exaggeration, he is certainly a well-grown specimen," said the Professor, complacently.  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle_

Returning to the fire, Malone picked up a stick and poked at the smoking wood.  On the plateau it was always a problem gathering fuel dry enough to burn, and on this humid mid-summer January night a fire wasn't really needed.  But Challenger had felt they all needed the comfort of freshly cooked food.  Agreeing, Malone and Veronica had gathered a large pile of the driest wood they could find.  Challenger tossed a few more pieces on.  Reluctantly the flames licked at them as if disappointed by the flavor of South American rainforest.

"Marguerite's tough," Veronica said as she sat down cross-legged beside Malone.  "She'll survive just to spite us, you know."

Challenger glanced over at Marguerite.  "Please keep your voice down, Veronica.  Marguerite is going to be very fragile for while.  I think that wolf may be the only thing holding her here with us.  I've been expecting her to bolt."

Veronica made a face.  Of them all, she still held a grudge against Marguerite.  They'd lost Roxton and Veronica had decided who was clearly responsible.  "I know she's sorry and I know she loved him in her way, but fragile?  That's is the last thing I'd call Marguerite.  Not in this century."

"Veronica!"  Malone's voice held a note of pleading.

Sun-bleached blonde hair fell forward to cover Veronica's face as she bent and flicked from her leg into the fire a many-legged, nameless insect.  "If she hadn't tricked you into playing her little game last night, this wouldn't've happened.  Roxton's worth ten of her."  Arising to her feet, Veronica stalked off and flopped down on her side in the soft leaf litter, her back to the rest of them.

The two men exchanged looks.  Sometimes a man had to wonder if even women understand women.  Certainly a lowly man could not.  It was a matter too enormous to ponder here in the rainforest, in the dead of a summer night.  The men sat silently watching sparks float away from the fire.  The Challenger expedition had now lost two men to the plateau.

"What do you think?" Malone finally asked, indicating where Marguerite lay asleep, curled up against the black wolf.  The wolf's eyes were open, looking back at him.  It almost seemed afraid to wake Marguerite, twitching its tail gently but otherwise laying perfectly still.

Challenger's eyes followed Malone's.  "Well, if you mean the dire wolf, Ned, like so many other things up here, it's an anachronism both in time and location.  Look at that thick fur, those huge paws.  It has no business being anywhere but deep snow country.  In the rest of the world, the dire wolf sub-species died out after the last ice age twenty thousand years ago.  Here it's probably been forced down out of the high mountains for some reason, a dearth of game perhaps."

Malone looked at Challenger's face.  The professor's soft voice lacked the enthusiasm he usually brought to scientific discussion.  His body seemed to sag on his bones.

"No, I mean at first I thought it might be a type of werewolf, and it's certainly the biggest wolf I've ever heard tell of, must be two hundred pounds at least.  But after I thought about it, I changed my mind.  When I was turning werewolf last year, I couldn't control myself -- I swear I would have eaten my own mother -- and this thing is as gentle as a kitten.  The sun doesn't bother it, it's the same day and night, and the moon's only half full.  So if it isn't a werewolf, it's obviously been tamed.  Trained even."

"Or it's incredibly intelligent by our standards."  At Malone's skeptical look, Challenger smiled gently.  "The wolves of our day are among the smartest of canids, much more so than your average canis familiaris.  We have no way of knowing an animal's intelligence without observing it.  Don't forget how quickly the raptors learned to respect our rifles."

"Well, it certainly loves Marguerite.  It follows her like a dog."

"He doesn't seem to want to lose sight of her.  Do you know, it came to his new name after only one repetition?"

Malone chuckled.  "Marguerite's given it a name already?"

Challenger joined him in a quiet laugh.  "She's been calling him Bruiser."  Challenger's smile faded.  "I believe it's one of the nicknames Roxton used during his brief career as a pugilist."

They'd come back full circle Marguerite's burning grief.  Like the mystery that was woman, it was too deep a subject for a late night in the rain forest.  Malone and Challenger only spoke again to establish who'd take first watch.  Without discussion, they agreed to let both women sleep through the night.

Malone settled into a space between Challenger and Veronica and tried to let the night fill him with stillness.  It wasn't easy.

                                           *_{}_*

**"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let Tink die."  Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie.**

**I believe in fairies.  (Claps her hands.)  Do you?  Please take a moment to let me know what you think of my story so far.**


	2. A Lobster Supper Dream

**"I've tried war and steeplechasin' and aeroplanes, but this huntin' of beasts that look like a lobster-supper dream is a brand-new sensation."  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle**

_The night before._

Lord John Roxton, His Majesty's knight, world-renowned big game hunter and a man in the throes of what his aristocratic mother would have called a serious infatuation, stalked down the forest trail.  If it'd been anyone else in their party out here alone – except Veronica, of course, who came and went as she pleased – he would have given them a good dressing down.  Marguerite in particular had more than once gotten into trouble walking around unaccompanied.  Damn Marguerite.  Damn her beautiful gray-green eyes.

He still couldn't believe the way he'd reacted.  Malone had just been helping Marguerite, hadn't he?  At least that's what Malone had claimed, that he'd been after a bug.

Last night Roxton and Veronica had been down in Challenger's workshop, Roxton re-loading cartridges in one corner while in another Veronica worked the bellows for Challenger's latest experiment in electrical lighting.  A series of sharp feminine squeals had resounded above their heads.  Marguerite.  Leaping up, Roxton's feet were on the stairs in two seconds.  She squealed again just as he reached the main floor.  In three long strides he crossed the central room, in another he'd crashed through the entry to her oriel bedchamber only to skid to a halt.  Kneeling on the floor before Marguerite, Malone had both his hands up her nightgown where they ought not to be.  His face seemed about to disappear up there as well.

Should he, Lord John Roxton, an educated Oxonian man, believe Malone's cock-and-bull story about rescuing Marguerite from a centipede crawling under her nightdress?  Especially considering how many years he'd wanted to put his hands where Malone's had been?  Wasn't Malone also a normal, red-blooded male?

Roxton hoped Malone's eye would stay black for at least a week and sincerely wished he'd broken his jaw instead.  At least he wouldn't have had to listen to Malone's stammered story.

He'd heard the fairy tale through but hadn't said a word, just grabbed his bandoleer off its hook and run for the elevator.  Yes, he'd run.  Out of there, as fast and far as he could.  Whatever Marguerite was up to, he didn't want any part of it.  At least not tonight.

Roxton stopped walking.  He'd reached the end of the forest.  Maybe twenty yards ahead, beyond a narrow band of open ground, the edge of the plateau sliced off the ground.  Under his feet the path vibrated gently.  Summerlee's Falls must be just beyond that rise.  Gotten that far, had he?  No wonder he was tired.  The half moon overhead cast too little light for him to read his watch, but the hour must be well after midnight.  He licked dry lips.  He hadn't thought to bring either water or food.  Actually he'd not thought at all.  Best go home before his carelessness got him killed, but first a drink.

Turning on his heel Roxton had hiked up the gentle rise a few feet before he saw it, a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye.  Raptors were diurnal, and it hadn't been big enough for a T-Rex.  Looked more like a Lizard -- man-sized biped, shiny dark skin.  Definitely a Lizard.

Lizard didn't necessarily mean enemy.  His Royal Highness Tribune may have sent Roxton an envoy of some sort, but Tribune being something of a fair-weather friend, Roxton pulled out a revolver just in case.

The motion had been to Roxton's right.  Turning in that direction, he held the pistol out with both hands.  "Hello?  Who's there?  I'm Lord John Roxton.  Who're you?"

"No gun."  A mumbled grunt.  "Put gun away."

Roxton zeroed in on the voice.  Low, maybe ten feet away, maybe less.  Too close for safety.  Damn, his head must've really been up his ass.  "Sorry, no can do without some idea of who you are.  Show yourself and I'll put it away."

The Lizard stepped part way into a dim patch of moonlight, revealing only a shoulder and a leg that quickly disappeared again.  As a show of good faith it stank, but Roxton returned pistol to holster.  "I've put the gun away.  You can come out now."

Leaves rustled but nothing came into view.  Roxton's right hand stole to his haft of the short machete hanging at the small of his back.  Better safe than sorry.  "Does my friend Tribune send me a message?"

"Triiibuuuunnnnne!"  The Lizard drew the name out into a long hiss.  "I show you Tribune!"  A bobbing, black streak of movement and then a heavy body knocked Roxton hard.  He recovered enough to slice sideways, burying the machete in the Lizard's side with a meaty thwack.  Hot blood sprayed Roxton's hand, but the Lizard didn't even stumble.  It swung about a few feet away and Roxton braced for another round.

There was something odd about the way this Lizard moved, but Roxton didn't have time for an anatomical study before it was on him again in a slashing, running attack.  Claws gouged across Roxton's chest and ripped deep into his right arm.

They were both wounded now.

Roxton rather thought he'd screamed when the Lizard marked him, but wasn't sure.  He'd no time to listen.  The machete slipped out of his bloody right hand and dropped to the ground.  Then the Lizard with an awkward, unbalanced leap was back, pressing its advantage.  Roxton tried to pull a pistol, but didn't get it out before the Lizard had him on the ground.

This was not going well.

"Hungry, hungry," the Lizard mumbled.  With its muzzle just inches above his face, Roxton could clearly see what had bothered him earlier.  A strange, dysfunctional combination of raptor and Lizard looked down.  The lower half of the saurian's face thrust out into a distorted raptor snout, edged by three times the normal Lizard complement of razor-sharp teeth that seemed stuck in at all sorts of random, odd angles.  The thing couldn't properly flex its jaw, or Roxton's face would be ripped off.  And there was something wrong with the Lizard hand that went for Roxton's throat.  It curled into long flanges more like a raptor's paw than a Lizard's quasi-human fingers.  Its narrow chest wheezed only half enough breath for the Lizard's body.

No more time for study.  With a twisting movement Roxton threw the Lizard off and staggered to his feet.  The heave had taken almost all of his remaining strength.  He'd only succeeded because he was the heavier by a good fifty pounds.  Blood ran down his chest and soaked into his trousers.  Every pant brought a fresh wave of agony.

"Was it something I said?" Roxton managed to gasp.  "Can't we talk about this?"

"Hungry," the Lizard panted.  "Eat."  One had to wonder how it could talk with that distorted mouth.

"Oh.  In that case ..."  Spotting the blade of the machete glittering in a patch of moonlight, Roxton dove for it, left arm outstretched, the Lizard, as he'd hoped, leaping after him.  Roxton would have to be quick to make this work.

But Roxton had lost too much blood.  He missed his timing by whole seconds.  The Lizard's paws slashed into Roxton's side then as the man went down, it cut across his ankles, hamstringing him.  This time Roxton heard himself scream, a sickening, horrible sound like a dying animal.

Wrapping his hand around the haft of the machete, Roxton rolled and swung down as hard as he could.  The Lizard's head rolled loose.  The rest of it spasmed in the dirt.

Too weak to move away, Roxton jerked as the Lizard's claws tore through him again and again.  Shock had set in; his shredded body hurt, but in a distant, distracted sort of way.

Hell of a way to die, six thousand miles from home.  Marguerite would be really angry with him now.  Roxton imagined her standing over him, arms folded across those beautiful round breasts, yelling that he'd been a careless and selfish idiot and that she would definitely _not_ go hunting with him for at least a week.  Blackness closed in.  He thought no more.

**"What, then, do you propose to do?" asked Summerlee, who had for once nodded his assent to the reasoning of his brother scientist.  The Poison Belt by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle**

"YOU WHAT?" His Royal Majesty Tribune roared.  "Do you have any _idea_ how much I have invested in your experiment?  And you let one of your test subjects escape?"  The Lizard Emperor, magnificently clad in gold and purple velvet robes, waved for two of his palace guards to take the alchemist into custody.

The thin, old, hump-backed Lizard groveled.  "My Lord Tribune!  We have but to capture it again.  This Gorlak was only a prisoner of war that I used in the first stage of the experiments.  I've progressed a great deal since."  Each of the guards had one of the Lizard's bony arms, and the old one's voice rose in pitch.  "My Lord!  I swear my serum does what you asked!  All who use it re-generate in minutes!  Even seconds!"

Tribune folded his scaly arms.  "Then why are you bothering me with this escapee, old Lizard?"

The alchemist mumbled a few words.  "Louder!  Or you'll be talking out of a hole in your throat!"  Obedient to his lord, one of the guards drew his knife and put it to under the old one's chin.

The old Lizard's wrinkled face screwed up.  "The escaped prisoner is infectious, My Lord!"  He tried to pull away from the knife's edge but the guards held him fast.  "The virus I gave Gorlak was polluted!  When I sliced a hand off, he regenerated raptor flesh!  Then he bit one of my assistants and now she re-generates as a feathered bird!  Gorlak must be captured and burned!  He could degenerate your entire empire back to the lowest animals!"

Tribune stood before his throne of office, his back to the alchemist and his guards.  Scaly royal hands clenched into fists.  Sitting down on the gem-encrusted chair, he waved a languorous hand to the guard with the knife and pronounced his royal decree.  "Kill him."  As the old Lizard crumpled to the floor, Tribune continued, " … and bring me his assistant."

                                                         )(=+=)(

**Do you believe in magic in a young girl's heart  
How the music can free her, whenever it starts  
And it's magic, if the music is groovy  
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie  
I'll tell you about the magic, and it'll free your soul  
But it's like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll.  
Do You Believe in Magic by the Lovin' Spoonful**

**I believe.  Do you believe?  Please take a moment to let me know.  Please punch the review button and we will believe together.**


	3. This Poisonous Cosmic Disturbance

**"Where do we see any signs of this poisonous cosmic disturbance?  Answer me that, sir!  Answer me that!  Come, come, no evasion!  I pin you to an answer!"  The Poison Belt by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.**

Challenger re-entered the common room from what had once been Roxton's bedchamber.  Malone stopped pacing the floor and looked at the professor's tired, lined face.  "Well?  Is she …?  Did you get enough of it out of her stomach?"  Challenger's improvised stomach pump thumped on the floor.  There'd be time to clean it up later.

"I don't know," Challenger said as he collapsed into one of Veronica's stick chairs.  Turning another of them about, Malone straddled it and sat too.

"You don't know?  Then … she might not make it?"  Veronica had been watching Malone's restless movement from what she called her "library," a section of the open-walled room lined with bookshelves.  "Do you want me to look for an antidote in my parents' journals?"

"Yes, that'd be good, Veronica.  I'm not too familiar with this poison.  It's unique to the plateau.  Is there any of that coffee left, Ned?  I could use a cup right now."  Malone's long arm reached to the stove and transferred the pot to the table.  Challenger rubbed his face with a long, bony hand as coffee sloshed into a chipped cup.

"But Marguerite _will_ live, George?"  Malone's bruised eye socket had turned green and yellow and stopped hurting days ago.  If their little party went down by one more … 

Challenger's looked at Malone over the rim of his cup.  He sighed as he put it down.  "At the end of the day, Ned, she'll live if she wants to, and that doesn't seem to be her top priority anymore."

Veronica had already pulled down the oldest of the leather-bound journals.  She glanced back over her shoulder at the professor.  "I can't believe she poisoned herself.  Suicide hardly seems Marguerite's style."

Malone spoke up.  "We all have a breaking point, Veronica."  His life had been broken and mended so many times over the last three years, he hardly resembled the young reporter who'd left London to prove himself to the world.  Marguerite had changed as well; but a hard, shiny surface turned away all but the most prying snoop.

Veronica's grunted "hmmpf" expressed her opinion of breaking points.  She hadn't found hers yet.

Challenger checked in on Malone's team.  "I agree with Ned.  Lord knows, as much as I'd love to see my Jessie again, I thank God every night that she's home safe in London.  I can't imagine remembering her as …"  His voice trailed off.

"As dinosaur kibble?"  Veronica slammed the book she held down and pulled the next.

There'd been a time when Challenger had been hard himself.  Few in London would recognize the subdued version of Challenger they knew and loved.

That had been very harsh of Veronica, but Malone couldn't bring himself to remonstrate.  Veronica grieved Roxton in her own way, perhaps less violently than Marguerite, but no less profound.  Challenger's lanky body unfolded itself from the chair.  "Yes, well, I'd best get back in there.  She shouldn't be alone if she comes to."

"George, can I do anything at all?"  Malone was back on his feet, almost trembling with nervous tension.  "Anything you need or she might want?"

Challenger turned back.  He looked thoughtful.  "You say Bruiser's still about?"

When they'd returned from their failed rescue mission, the wolf had sat down just outside the electrified fence.  Even Marguerite couldn't lure it within.

But it still stayed close by.  When Marguerite had ventured to the ground for Roxton's memorial, it had barked and danced in the sun.  It shadowed Malone whenever he took a rifle out hunting.  Twice Malone could've sworn Bruiser had flushed him game.  Tender young venison, both times.  Marguerite's favorite.

"Just saw him yesterday down by the windmill.  You want me to get him up here?"

"If you can.  He might give her something to live for.  Don't spend too much time on it, though.  If Veronica finds an antidote formula, you two might have to hunt down the ingredients."  Taking his coffee from the table, Challenger started back.  He stopped once more.  "Uh, Malone if you'd be good enough.  There's one other thing.  We've made quite a mess of Roxton's bed.  If you could carry Marguerite to her own …"

"Happy to."  Malone followed the older man through the doorway.

Malone threw the hunk of roast venison and most of the coil of braided line to the ground.  With the end he still held, he fashioned a loop for a wolf collar.  The windmill screeched slowly overhead.  Bruiser hadn't shown up yet but even Malone could read evidence of the wolf's occupation -- large paw prints in the soft dirt, small tufts of black fur caught in the rough planks, and an indent in the dead grass where it had made its bed last night.

Malone felt sure he'd been right about the wolf's training.  Only a tamed animal would prefer a man-made construct to a bed in the forest.

"Bruiser?"  His loop ready, Malone yelled the name several times.  Nothing.  He put two fingers in his mouth and tried a piercing New York newsboy whistle.  A faint bark answered.  Malone whistled again.  The bark sounded closer this time.

In another minute Bruiser bounded across the open field, but stopped ten feet away and with a great loose shake showered the grass with water.  The scent of wet canine drifted to Malone's nose.  The wolf then barked three times, dropped its rump to the ground and scratched an ear with a paw.  Malone could practically hear it ask,_ What's up, Ned?_

He felt ridiculous.  He was here to beg a wolf for help!  Only the memory Marguerite's limp body in his arms held him.  "Bruiser!  Glad to see you, old man," Malone started out in his best dogs-and-small-children voice.  Tearing off a strip from the venison, he tossed it close to the wolf.  It didn't even look at it.

"Okay, didn't figure that'd work.  But how am I going to catch you, boy?  Tell me that."  Bruiser made a sound that seemed half a chuckle.  Returning to its feet, the wolf snatched a stick from the ground and bounded about holding the stick in its mouth.

"No, sorry.  Don't have time for fetch.  I gotta get back right away."  Malone came to a decision.  He'd tell Bruiser the facts.  There was something uncanny about the animal, it might even understand his words, and if not, just maybe the sound of a human voice would hypnotize it into standing still.  He'd read some strange stories.  Malone took the makeshift loop collar in his right hand and the rest of the line in his left and, clearing his throat, began to talk.

"You're needed up in the tree house, Bruiser."  Malone took a short step forward.  Bruiser's ears cocked forward but the wolf didn't move.  "You shouldn't have abandoned Marguerite at the garden gate.  She didn't take it too well."  Another step.  The wolf still showed no signs of bolting away.  Its head dropped down low and the stick tumbled out of its mouth.

"She's been in bad shape since we lost Roxton.  Won't hardly eat."  Malone still couldn't say out loud that his friend Lord Roxton was dead.  Oh hell.  Two more steps.  The wolf lay down on its belly.  The long furry ears folded back tight to its skull.  It looked worried.

"She's, uh, she's even been sleeping in his bed.  Says it smells like him.  Stays in there all day long.  Nights too."  Another couple of steps.  Malone was almost close enough.  The wolf seemed frozen in place.

"We think she got into Challenger's herbs last night and dosed herself with one of the poisons, I'm not sure which.  Challenger can tell you.  I found her in Roxton's bed at sun-up all wrapped up in his clothes, unconscious.  I couldn't wake her up."  Malone stood over the wolf, the loop in his hand.  The wolf's green eyes were locked on his.  It whined.

"She's tried to kill herself, Bruiser.  Marguerite could really use a friend.  Will you come back with me, please?"  Surging up, Bruiser broke past Malone and ran across the meadow at top speed.  Malone almost screamed in despair until he realized the wolf had taken the shortest possible route to the tree house.  He started running himself, but with four legs Bruiser would reach the electric fence long before he would.

       **                                        //^:0:^\\**

**My home lies deep within you  
And I've got my own place in your soul  
Now, when I look out through your eyes  
I'm young again even though I'm very old  
I Write the Songs as sung by Barry Manilow (Lyricist -- Bruce Johnston)**

**Thank you for letting me and my words inside your life.  We're enjoying being here.  Please write your thoughts to me and we'll sing together.**


	4. The Beasts Have Lived

**"Conditions have changed, and the beasts died.  Here it seems that the conditions have not changed, and the beasts have lived."  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle**

Roxton wanted to howl his frustration.  Without Malone he had no way to open the gate and the electric fence stood above five feet high.  However, he assured himself, with a running start a wolf of his size ought to be able to hurdle six feet or more.

Would he ever get comfortable with this new life on four legs?  Not likely.

Roxton stopped his restless pacing and looked back towards the windmill.  Malone would take at least another three or four minutes to catch up and even if he started barking, Veronica and Challenger would take about the same to get the elevator to the ground.  He wasn't going to wait that long.

Cocking back his newly elongated head (it still felt unbalanced on his neck, as though it belonged to someone else!), Roxton let loose a long, aching howl.  Veronica appeared on tree house balcony and waved a greeting.  He yipped.

Roxton was rather proud of his howl.  He'd practiced it a few nights ago on a hillside far from the tree house, trying out different pitches and inflections.  No reason to disturb anyone's sleep, he'd reasoned when choosing the spot.  But he'd made a slight miscalculation -- he'd disturbed plenty of villagers and, for his trouble, the next day had gotten two arrows in his back.

Good thing he wasn't only a wolf but also a werewolf.  If he could call being damned for all eternity "good."  Of their own accord, the two flint-tipped arrows had fallen out of his body, leaving not so much as an itchy spot behind.

The elevator began to scrape its way down to the ground.

Backing up twenty feet or so, Roxton turned to look at the fence.  No, he decided, better go ten more.  He trotted to the furthest edge of the open ground where he'd been clearing underbrush just two weeks ago, turned again, tested the dirt once or twice with his paws then took off at his best speed.  He sailed over the fence with a good six inches to spare.

A half minute later the elevator's cab smacked the ground.  They'd sent it down empty.  Faster that way -- no need to worry about spraining someone's ankles with the impact.

He heard Veronica above, "I can see Malone coming, Bruiser.  Hold on!"  Roxton cocked an ear back in that direction and heard Malone huffing up the hill.

What if he just pulled the cord to start the elevator? Roxton asked himself   He reared up on his hind legs and had the leather strip in his mouth before he stopped.  His friends must never know who this wolf had once been and for him to run the elevator was a long step in the wrong direction.

Roxton didn't want one of them to hesitate killing a werewolf because it had once been a friend.  So far Roxton felt more man than wolf, even learning to walk on four legs the hard way, falling all over himself like a newborn colt.  Dinosaurs and rodents satisfied his hunger – although he had to eat them raw and he'd never cared much for steak tartare, especially without a sauce -- but the moon still waned.  In five weeks it would be full.  Eventually they would have to kill him -- when bloodlust burned away his human soul.

Roxton felt sure he'd know the time to leave.  Thanks to Marguerite's obsession with gems and jewelry, he'd already been half way down the path to wolf.  Roxton had felt the animal lusts firing up his blood, and it wasn't a feeling one soon forgot.

But he ought to leave now, not take a chance.  _Actually_, he told himself, _you should never have followed them home._  When Roxton had come to and found the Lizard's body missing and himself locked into this form, he'd gone crazy for a while.  He'd almost thrown himself off the plateau's edge.  He still wasn't sure why he hadn't.  Too stubborn to die, too stupid to live, he supposed.

Roxton had been watching in the brush when Challenger found his shredded clothes.  Marguerite's stricken face had drawn him to follow, aching to provide her comfort of some kind, and then there'd been the raptor attack.  How could he have stood by for that?

Now Roxton couldn't seem to stay far away from his friends.  The instinctive need for human companionship still ran strong, as strong as any bloodlust.

There'd be no knowing why he'd turned wolf that night.  He might have been infected a year ago at the same time as Malone, and it'd lain dormant until he'd died as a man.  Or the Lizard may have suffered a type of lycanthropy.  Or the plateau had simply claimed Roxton as its own and turned his spirit into what it truly was, a deadly supernatural killer.

If there'd only been some hope of a cure.  Challenger had treated Malone's lycanthropy with one of his concoctions – using mostly silver nitrate and wolfsbane suspended in whisky if Roxton remembered correctly – but when Malone had been dosed, he'd been at least half-human and his infection still weak.  His two-legged, half-wolf body had still been forcing him to hide from the sun.

Roxton was beyond reach of a potion, scientific or otherwise.  He'd been fully transformed into this four-legged monster of a dire wolf, this "Bruiser" as Marguerite called him, and he ran around in the sun all day long without any return to man-shape.  The only human thing left was his brain … and his heart, and he only knew he had the latter because it seemed ready to break apart.

His hard-headed Marguerite wanted to die?  It was beyond belief.

Malone had reached the electrified gate.  Panting hard, he was bent over just outside the fence, trying to catch his breath.  Roxton barked sharply twice and bounded half way to Malone.  He barked again as Malone looked up.  With an effort, Malone straightened to unlatch the wire and let himself in.

"Jumped it, old boy?" Malone asked as they entered the elevator and he pulled the strap.  "Wish I'd seen that!  You must be some steeplechaser!  Come on, let's go help Challenger save our Marguerite!"

Ever since Roxton had first seen Marguerite in London, she'd sported the same fair skin.  The tropics hadn't given her Veronica's deep tan.  Even after three years she'd still get a nasty burn if she stayed in the open too long.  This morning her color wasn't much darker than the muslin bed sheet.  God, she looked weak.

Roxton would've given everything he'd once owned -- the estate near Avebury, the hundred thousand pounds in the bank, and, yes, his entire gun collection -- to regain his fingers and stroke Marguerite's tangled mass of dark brunette curls.

And a voice.  A voice would've helped too.  To tell her over and over that he loved her.  As a wolf, all Roxton could do was whine and lick.  It'd have to do.

Marguerite's skin tasted hot, salty and sour, and he could smell the sick poison on her breath.  In fact, now that he was a wolf, Roxton smelled everything keenly.  It was almost like a second set of eyes.  He could smell the cold, sliced venison and melon on the table, the rainwater in the cistern, and hundreds of other subtle things.  Most of all the tree house smelled of his friends.  Marguerite's spicy sweetness, Challenger's old flesh and Malone's young masculine musk were the closest to him, but Veronica's sun-warmed femininity floated in from the other room and there were traces of another fading human masculine musk that could only be his own.

He licked Marguerite's face again.  She stirred a little.  Her head rolled in his direction.  "John?" a wisp of voice asked.  He barked.  Heavily lashed eyelids fluttered.  She smiled and sighed then faded again, but her breathing seemed stronger.

Malone stood in the doorway to Marguerite's room, in exactly the same place Roxton had stopped a week ago when he'd first come upon Marguerite's carefully set-up farce.  Malone spoke over his shoulder to Veronica.  "… No, I didn't bring him at all.  He brought me.  Did you find anything yet?"

Veronica's young voice answered from further away.  "One possibility, but it takes two ingredients we've no way to … "  Malone left the doorway to join her in the library and their intermingled voices rose and fell.  If he focused, Roxton could hear them, but his interest lay in here.

Challenger patted the bed next to Marguerite.  "It's okay, Bruiser.  I think she'd probably like some company.  Come on, boy.  Up here."

The two women, Veronica and Marguerite, had the largest beds in the tree house.  Somehow it had just worked out that way.  Roxton found time to be grateful as he stretched out next to Marguerite's slowly breathing form.  He wished he could do more than just lie there, but it wasn't the first time his entire contribution had been moral support.  The bed ropes creaked as he settled down.  This bed had been made to hold two people.  Why hadn't Roxton ever taken advantage of that?  Now he'd never have another chance.

Roxton rested his muzzle on Marguerite's bent arm and, trusting his sensitive ears to wake him if Challenger moved away, tried to doze.  He had little success.  His heart hurt too much.

                         (0*0)

**Magic lives in curves, not angles.  Attributed to Mason Cooley, U.S. aphorist (a guy that thinks up cute sayings)**

**Please slide right down the curve I've thrown you in this chapter, and send me your thoughts.  I'm waiting to hear from you -- and you -- and you over there as well!**


	5. True Signals

**Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure -- these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion. The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle**

_This is really indecent_, Marguerite thought. _ Even in this godforsaken wilderness, I can't get any privacy._ The bed ropes shifted and she tipped a little toward her right. Someone had definitely just joined her in bed. But who? Challenger or Malone? Not likely, both were too moral by half. Veronica wouldn't dare, and Roxton had … Roxton had …

She'd have to look.

Roxton's familiar sun-browned face smiled at her across the linen pillow.

Roxton? _Oh thank God,_ she thought. _I'm dead._ Her hand moved to touch him and encountered a solid, bare hip that tensed and shifted beneath her hand. She _must_ be in Heaven. But the thought gave her pause -- suicides went to Hell.

Then this was just a dream after all, and she still had to get the dying part over.

Roxton's voice, cultured by years of private tutors and so at odds with his rugged exterior, whispered in her ear, "Marguerite, you've done some really foolish things, but this is beyond even you. You've fought so long and hard to stay alive. Why would you try to kill yourself?"

Now wasn't that just too much? Her dream Roxton was a scold -- but it was so totally in character. He always thought he knew best, even when he didn't know anything at all.

Beyond Roxton's shoulder her bedroom furnishings shimmered in the straight-down rays of the mid-day tropical sun. Apparently Roxton had let her sleep in. Perhaps he was mad at her. That was it. She remembered. He'd gotten mad because she hadn't done his laundry.

But Roxton was so handsome, even when he was mad -- particularly when he was mad. It made him look like the Devil's chief huntsman. She ran a finger along the strong jaw line and teased the cleft in his chin with her fingernail. Roxton's hand caught hers and brought it to his lips. His square fingers felt solid and warm, his lips moist. This was a really, really vivid dream. The best she'd ever had.

"If one plays games, milord John, one must pay the price."

Gently Marguerite pulled her hand loose and began to trace a complicated design on the hairless chest. It occurred to Marguerite that Roxton was hers at last. Naked, attentive and right here in her bed. "I don't want to ever wake up! Do you have any idea how many times I've tried to seduce you?"

Roxton groaned and moved closer to put his arm around her waist. He spoke quietly, his voice rough with strong emotion. "Don't talk like that! I've worked too hard to keep my Marguerite alive. I won't let you give up now. Promise me you'll live."

Not only was this version of Roxton a scold, but also a bully. Perhaps an attack of the pouts would swing this discussion her way. Marguerite's lower lip thrust out. She put a whine into her voice. "But I want to be with you. It's lonely here on Earth. Everybody hates me. You're the only … the only one that loved me. And you're … you're …" Why couldn't she say it anymore? She'd said it just a few days ago. She clenched her jaw, fighting to get out the word. "You're dead, dead, dead!"

There. It was out. She'd told Roxton he was dead.

Looking over his shoulder, he was, as usual, not listening. "What is it?" Marguerite asked. "Are we in danger?" Roxton's instincts had saved them all a thousand times.

He turned back to her. "No, no. They're giving you the antidote. You have to fight now, Marguerite. Fight with all your strength."

Challenger returned to his chair by Marguerite's bed. They'd managed to get almost all the antidote down her throat. Veronica, on her way out and standing on a step just above him, sighed. "That's the best we can do, George. Now it's up to her."

"And Bruiser," Malone chimed in. "Look at him. He hasn't hardly moved for hours."

When Malone had lifted Marguerite and Challenger'd carefully poured small doses of antidote in her mouth, the wolf's eyes had slitted open. They'd followed Veronica's hands massaging Marguerite's throat to encourage the mouthfuls to go down. Only after Malone lowered Marguerite down to the bed had Bruiser's eyes closed again. Resting his head on Marguerite's shoulder, Bruiser lay so quietly he seemed in a trance.

Marguerite had the faintest smile on her face, but otherwise hadn't changed.

All any of them could do now was wait. Wait and pray. Even Bruiser.

At some point Marguerite made the choice of life over death, tomorrow over yesterday. Roxton's pleading had something to do with it. He'd asked her to live, making his request simple: _Please live, Marguerite. For me. Because I loved you. Because you loved me._

Her dream version of Roxton still held Marguerite close, his long body cupped to her side. She'd made him swear to stay in her dream until she woke up. And when he'd asked how Marguerite wanted to pass all that time, she'd laughed and waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

That hadn't gone over well; Roxton's blush had threatened to put her sheets on fire and he'd tried to move away. "I don't think that's a good idea, Marguerite." It seemed even in her dreams, Roxton got cold feet. He was always ready with a leer and a libidinous quip; but when it came down to business, something always conveniently interfered.

Pulling him back, she'd suggested he just talk and tell her stories about his adventures around the world.

So, although his encircling arms periodically squeezed her, and his hand now and then stole to her hair, his voice never stopped. He'd re-told hunting stories she'd heard in the tree house at least three or four times.

But to keep him in her dream, she'd listen to them again. Now he'd begun to talk about his guns.

"… and that's how I got the .470 with the telescopic sight. I've never been back to Peru since. So what's your favorite firearm, Marguerite? You've always seemed to rather fancy pistols."

Ah, an opening at last. "Yes, you actually have one of my favorites. A really fine piece." Maybe she could still get Roxton to try a little target practice if she used the right technique.

She moved her hip gently to check the condition of Roxton's sidearm. Yes, just as she thought. Loaded and ready. Although his mind might call what she wanted a bad idea, his body felt otherwise. But the man had fire-control, she'd give him that.

"Oh, which one? One of the automatics, I'll bet. You like rapid fire."

Marguerite laughed. "Why don't I describe it for you, and you make a guess?"

Roxton seemed to know she teased him, but not about what. Why couldn't she have dreamed up a more lascivious version of her great white hunter? Oh well, that just wouldn't have been the same man. Roxton's eyes narrowed skeptically, and he said, "Okay, but I get to ask a few questions." Marguerite nodded agreement and he continued. "How long is the barrel?"

Marguerite moved her hip again. Her lips pursed as she thought. "I'd say somewhere around six -- six and a half inches, maybe a little more."

Roxton's forehead furrowed. "Six inches? But … hmm, what it's rate of fire?"

Stroking his chest with a fingertip, she spiraled in on the left nipple. "I don't know. You've never let me shoot it. But I've heard that its clip, uh, lasts quite awhile."

Marguerite's mouth followed her finger to Roxton's chest. She nibbled gently. He didn't move away. Quite the contrary, his arms pulled her closer, and bunching his buttocks, he rubbed her belly with his weapon.

"Wuh … what's the caliber?" His chin rubbed the top of Marguerite's head as he spoke. "Do you know what you're doing to me? I thought we agreed to …"

"You agreed, not me." Her hand reached down to encircle the barrel. She gave it a firm squeeze. "I'm not sure about the caliber, but it's big." A man who racked a pistol like that learned to be careful with it. Maybe that's what kept him shy.

"Marguerite, I …"

"See here, Roxton. This is _my_ dream. And you've never let me do any target shooting with this gun." She tugged on the weapon in question. "It'd cheer me up." She moved her mouth to his neck and tested the flavor there – both salty and slightly sweet. "I've got the perfect holster for it."

With a hand intertwined in her hair, Roxton tipped back Marguerite's head. His serious green eyes searched hers. "Yes, I'd forgotten that this is only a dream. You want me that much? Then you shall have me. Show me this holster of yours."

/|0g:0|\

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes  
I all alone beweep my outcast state,  
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,  
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,  
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,  
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,  
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,  
With what I most enjoy contented least;  
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,  
Haply I think on thee,-- and then my state,  
Like to the lark at break of day arising  
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate,  
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings  
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.  
Sonnet XXIX (29) by William Shakespeare 

**Ain't love grand? Please drop me a note. We'll talk of love together.**


	6. Planets and Stars

Is it, then, a change in those planets and stars?  To me such an idea is inconceivable.  What common change could simultaneously come upon them all?  Is it a change in our own atmosphere?  It is possible, but in the highest degree improbable, since we see no signs of it around us, and chemical analysis has failed to reveal it.  The Poison Belt by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"Look out!" cried one the four Lizards that carried the heavy perch.  He wildly milled his free left arm, but it did no good.  He lost his balance as well as his hold, and for the third time since daybreak today (and at least the hundredth time this month), the perch's occupant fluttered heavily away as an abandoned pole end sunk into the mud.

From a few feet ahead, General Gengal turned and surveyed the situation.  The Lizard who'd dropped his burden was struggling in sucking sand just inches from the footprints of the troop of twenty Lizards that had already passed.

"You two, put down Her Ladyship's perch there and throw Hollal a rope," the General said with a gesture toward the perch's lead bearers.  "Brankon, catch up with the rest of column and tell them to fall out and wait.  And have the centurion send back four fresh Lizards."

A clawful of fresh leaves rained down.  "General, I am _so_ sorry!"  The trill had come from above the General's head and to the left.  "I wish I were fully transformed so I could fly and your soldiers needn't carry me.  We've been out here in the wilderness so long, they must all be exhausted.  I'm, uh, if you'll forgive the pun, no feather-weight."

Gengal chuckled and, tipping back his scaly head, he squinted into the mid-day sun filtering through the trees.  "Think nothing of it, Milady Alchemist.  His Majesty told me the importance of your escapee."  He spied her blue-feathered legs on a sturdy branch about eight feet up.  "Do you need a hand down from there?"

"No, I'm fine.  I can wait until your Lizard is free.  But please keep my cases out of the mud and water.  When we have Gorkal in our claws, I'll need them for a biopsy … or an autopsy.  I do not intend to be a bird for the rest of my days."  She continued almost under her breath, "… or succumb to madness."

The General sighed as he watched Hollal's emergence from the quagmire.  He spoke what they both knew.  "And there's no telling who or what else that monster has bitten in all this time.  There could be Humans regenerating as Lizards or Raptors regenerating as Tyrannosaurs.  We _must_ find him."

**It was clear that the great volcanic outburst which had raised this strange plateau so many years ago had not yet entirely spent its forces.  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle**

The hard volcanic rock at the plateau's edge had split here not long ago, perhaps even within living memory, as the edges of this fissure were still un-weathered and sharply defined.  At the bottom of the eight-foot wide crack a lava plug glowed red-hot, and the rising heat made the air ripple and dance.  In the plateau wall the fissure's open mouth oozed a slow drip of molten rock.  Given ten thousand years it would build a stairway to the ground below.  Roxton's long red wolf tongue licked his heated muzzle and he backed away.

Premature death wasn't his style.  No need for this yet.  At nightfall, when the full moon held the sky alone, would be soon enough.  In this field of fumaroles and fissures, twenty furnaces burned hot enough to consume a werewolf.  This didn't have to be the one.

And Roxton still had a mystery to solve and, if possible, vengeance to wreck on the confounded Lizard that had tried to eat him.  A headless body shouldn't just up and walk away, not even here on the plateau.  But apparently that Lizard had.

Two weeks ago on a hunting expedition with Marguerite, Roxton had seen the Lizard's malformed spoor.  There'd been no mistake – his wolf nose recognized the abnormal pong of half-Lizard, half-raptor.  He'd taken Marguerite straight back home.  Several times since he'd found the spoor again, and each time closer to the tree house.  But it always been too cold a trail to follow, or he'd had Marguerite in tow.  He'd despaired of ever finding his murderer.

Until today.  Today he'd had to leave his Marguerite behind for good.  And he'd picked up the monster's trail again just as he reached the first fumarole, the vented sulfur combining with the Lizard's stink and turning even his wolf stomach inside out.  But Roxton had thanked his luckiest star.  He'd be damned indeed if he left that monster on the plateau to threaten the tree house after he was gone; and here it was, conveniently at hand.  Roxton could take the monster along with him on his trip to Hell.

This lava field would be a safe hiding place for the malformed Lizard.  Why hadn't he thought of it before?  Raptors and Rexes avoided the hot ground and the superheated updrafts didn't tempt the pterodactyls.  The monster could hunt elsewhere and return here for a secure sleep.

Around noon Roxton had found the Lizard's lair a hundred feet east of where he now stood, and although he couldn't see into the dark hole, he could smell its living presence.  It had been in residence all day.  Apparently the ugly thing hunted only at night.

Trotting further along the plateau's edge to cooler ground, Roxton sat down and looked across the cloud-filled vastness to the sun sliding down the western sky.  Sniffing the fresh wind that blew from a world away, Roxton thought one last time of Marguerite.

Every night for a month Roxton had dreamed vividly, of being a man again with his Marguerite under him and of giving her all the pleasure her soul could hold.  Such incredible, glorious dreams.  Although he couldn't make them real, those dreams had kept him near Marguerite far too long.

That and the Marguerite that filled his days, at first weak from the poison, then a playful and constant companion.  She'd made him a wolf collar out of one of his belts.  It still hung on his neck and smelled of the man he used to be.  He'd let her teach him tricks and had teased her to distraction.

Roxton stood on all fours.  The full moon had arisen mid-afternoon, but with the sun sharing the sky, it couldn't do its dirty work.  By the calendar Challenger kept on the workshop wall, this was the fullest moon this month.  Tonight it would happen, Roxton would lose the rest of the man he'd been.  If Roxton wanted to kill his killer, he'd best make his move right now.

                        -8\o^o/8-

**So what do we do with our lives?  
We leave only a mark.  
Will our story shine like a light  
Or end in the dark?  
Give it all or nothing.**

**We don't need another hero.  
We don't need to know the way home.  
All we want is life beyond  
Thunderdome.**

We Don't Need Another Hero as sung by Tina Turner 

**Don't heroes just drive you nuts?  Drop me a note we can commiserate about the mysteries of the heroic mind.**


	7. Every Nerve

**Therefore, although every nerve in my body shrank from the whisky-maddened figure which I pictured in the room above, I still answered, in as careless a voice as I could command, that I was ready to go.**

**Some further remark of Lord Roxton's about the danger only made me irritable.  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle**

"I didn't ask for your company, Malone.  You're a volunteer, remember?"  Marguerite's voice floated back to Malone from about ten feet ahead but he couldn't see her.

"Just slow down, Marguerite, that's all I'm asking.  I won't be able to see you when it gets dark.  We should either stay closer together or stop for the night."  Nightfall was sudden in the tropics, daylight turning to night in a matter of minutes.  They should stop and camp, but after a day tracking Bruiser, Malone knew he'd have to be the one to call a halt.  Although Malone had come to keep Marguerite company and protect her as best he could, he knew that he wasn't Lord Roxton.  Getting her to stop tonight could be quite a trick.

Marguerite reappeared from between two thick, moss-covered tree trunks.  "We're close to the lava pits.  It'd be a good place to camp, okay?"

"If you like the smell of sulfur."

"But no dino's," Marguerite's voice cooed the three words as though she promised heaven on Earth.  Perhaps she did.  It was hard to find true safety on the plateau.

Malone sighed.  "Let's go then."  Marguerite took him at his word.  Spinning on her heel, she marched forward once again.  After her suicide attempt, Marguerite had slowly regained her old self, as hard and sharp as the machete in her belt.  The only difference had been Bruiser.  As she had once leaned on Roxton for her humanity, she now leaned on the wolf.  Bruiser followed her everywhere, or maybe she followed him.  At times it was hard to tell.

With Challenger and Veronica away at the Zanga village, Malone and Marguerite had been alone the previous night for the first time since Roxton's death.  For some reason it had been an awkward evening, Marguerite reading aloud to the wolf on one side of the great room, Malone trying to write on the other.  This morning, Bruiser had been gone.  Neither of them had run the elevator for him the night before, so either Bruiser had run it himself or jumped from a balcony.  Both were equally implausible, but the elevator basket had been on the ground.  Customary night-time security was to park it up on top.

"You know, Marguerite, Bruiser's probably just out looking for lady wolves."

Marguerite didn't break stride.  "Well, if he finds a bitch to his liking, we can fit her in, can't we?"

"Marguerite!  I mean, really, a bitch.  Oh yes, I'm sorry.  Of course, a bitch is a female dog.  Sorry, I wasn't thinking.  Yes, of course.  Always room for one more."  Malone wondered if Veronica would agree with that.  "But if Bruiser's got himself a lady, it's not going to be just one more.  More likely, he'll be a family man in a month or so."  _And_, Malone thought to himself, _I've only the one rope. _ Both wolves would have to return with them willingly or not at all.

"Maybe, but what's the harm …"  Marguerite stopped moving and speaking at the same time.  Malone, looking for his next footing on the uneven ground, almost knocked her down.  She steadied herself with a hand on his arm.  "Do you hear that?"

Marguerite's ears were more sensitive than Malone's.  "No.  Hear what?"

"Barking."  Marguerite did a three hundred sixty degree turn then pointed a bit to the right.  "That way, it's Bruiser.  Come on."

"No, don't shoot," Malone said quietly, his hand pulling down on Marguerite's pistol barrel.  "Not yet.  Give Bruiser a chance.  I think he's got a plan."

"Are you mad?  Bruiser has a plan?"  Marguerite hissed, but she let the gun drop halfway then flipped it quickly back.  Bruiser had started another run at the strange creature's distorted legs.  "Oh damn.  Bruiser, please don't get killed," she whispered, but held her fire.  She didn't want to hit the wolf.

Malone's earnest young face looked blood red in the light of the setting sun.  He pointed away from the combatants.  "Yes, Bruiser knows he can't kill that monstrosity on open ground.  I think he's driving it toward the volcanic fissure there.  See?  The glow 'bout ten feet to the right?"

Marguerite's eyes didn't follow his pointing finger.  Bruiser had run underneath the monster's raptor-sharp claws.  A kick and the wolf tumbled away, nose over paws.  The monster followed to deliver a finishing blow.  "No!" Marguerite screamed and squeezed off three rounds as fast as she could.  The monster staggered but didn't go down.  It turned from the wolf to the two humans.

They heard a faint, slurred voice.  "No gun.  Gun hurt inside."  The monster could speak!

Malone had the double-barreled shotgun at his shoulder.  "Who are you?  What are you?  Don't come any closer!  I'll shoot!"

Only a hiss answered.  The creature crouched ready to spring, but staggered when something knocked it from behind.  Bruiser.  Wolf and monster melee'd together in the failing light.  "Bruiser!" Marguerite shouted.  "Back off!  Malone's going to shoot!"

Bruiser leapt away and the monster straightened up, clacking its toothy jaws and thrashing a long, thin tail.  Malone pulled both triggers at once and staggered back from the shotgun's double kick.  The blast had shoved the monster half way to the crevice brink, but still it didn't go down.  Blood from its ripped arm and chest splattered and smoked on the hot rock under foot.  A clawed paw hung by a thread of skin.  The monster bit it off.

Leaping out of the red sun still teetering on the edge of day, Bruiser hit the monster high on its side and sunk his crushing jaws into the scaled neck.  Both humans heard the snapping spine, and the distorted body finally fell and lay still.  It was over just that fast.  Bruiser rolled off the beast and tried to stand.

"He did it!" Malone cried.  "That's got him, Bruiser!  That's got him!"

Roxton stood with his forepaws braced out in front for balance, trying to catch his breath while he spat out the tainted Lizard blood.  At Malone's enthusiastic exclamation he looked up.  No!  Oh God, no!  Both Malone and Marguerite were just feet away.  The moon hung huge behind Marguerite's shoulder, and the last reflected sunlight was fading from her face.

Roxton spun about and began to stagger uncertainly towards the smoking volcanic fissure.  He knew that his werewolf body would heal in a minute or two, just as he knew the danger the sunset had brought his friends.  He could not bear the idea of killing them in a mad werewolf rage.  There was only one thing that he could do:  he had to incinerate himself -- now

He was within a yard of the fissure, when Marguerite put her hands on Roxton's collar.  "No, Bruiser!  Stop!  Bad wolf!"  She was sobbing; and although Roxton didn't want to snap or growl, he couldn't drag Marguerite to her death.  He stopped.  Then Malone was on Roxton's other side, tying off a rope.  Roxton tried to jump away, but Malone hauled back hard and spun Roxton's weakened body on his back.  The boy certainly had gotten strong!  With a quick wrap of the rope's other end, Malone bound up three of Roxton's paws.  Roxton lay helpless.

"He was going to walk right over the edge!  Do you think he's been blinded?"  Marguerite's anxious hands pulled back the lid of Roxton's eye.  Her head bent close.  Marguerite had lost her hat somewhere.  Bright moonlight lit one side of her face and a glow from the fissure's hot lava lent a red sheen to the other.

_Now_, Roxton told himself.  _It will happen now.  I will kill my Marguerite and be damned for all eternity. _ Roxton's heart pounded and he lay still as he waited for the final horror.

Pulling his kerchief from a pocket, Malone wrapped the cloth quickly around Roxton's long wolf snout and knotted it snugly tight.  _Smart move, Ned, _Roxton congratulated the young man._  Thank you._  "No, I don't think so.  His eyes are tracking you.  Bruiser, old boy, how are you?  How's our big bad wolf?"

Marguerite pushed Malone's hand away from Roxton's head.  "He just saved us from that monster and you're trussing him up?  Are you heartless, Malone?"

"No, just cautious.  Look at him.  He doesn't mind."  Gingerly Malone's hands began to feel Roxton's wolf body, looking for damage.  "And he might not like it when we bandage him."

The moonlight bathed all three of them, its silver shining on Marguerite's bare head and gleaming her every curl.  Roxton's heart lurched with an all-too-human longing to hold her in his arms, and he felt nothing but tenderness.  The moment for losing his soul to bloodlust had come and gone.  Maybe Roxton wasn't an eternally damned werewolf after all.  Maybe the plateau had invented another fate for him.

Malone's eyebrows lifted in surprise.  "I don't believe it!" he said and rocked back on his heels.

Marguerite's anxious hands went to Roxton's ribs.  "What is it?  Is he badly hurt?"

"No!  There's not a mark on him!  Nothing, not even a scratch!  It's like …"  Malone stopped talking abruptly and grabbed for the pistol at his belt.  "Look out!  That thing's moving again!"

Sharp pistol reports combined with harsh screeching.  Roxton could see almost nothing.  Malone and Marguerite were on their feet, backs turned to him, squeezing off hurried, un-aimed shots.  Fighting to right himself, Roxton only managed to roll over a few times.

Then Roxton did see the monster.  It must have charged straight at Malone and Marguerite, crazed with pain, right into their firing guns.  They split apart, running to either side.  The monster ran past a few feet away from Roxton's bound head.  He rolled, trying to track its leap over the eight-foot wide crevasse.  He saw it sail through the super-heated air and then gallop safely into the night.

Too late Roxton realized his struggles had put him right at the crevasse brink.  On his back, bound and helpless, he'd started to slip over into the hot air.  If his jaws had been free, Roxton would have howled.

"Grab him!"  He heard Marguerite's frantic cry at the same time as his binding ropes jerked.  A hand seized his tail with an excruciating wrench.  Roxton forced himself to go limp and let Marguerite and Malone haul him out.  If he struggled now, he'd pull them all in.

Roxton was out and the three of them lay together for a moment, panting.  Marguerite freed the ropes.  "Bruiser, how bad is it?  Tell me where it hurts, boy."

Roxton rested his chin on Marguerite's shoulder as she and Malone examined him for damage.  He felt his body healing already.  It seemed faster every time.  The werewolf … no, he couldn't call himself a werewolf anymore.  He was something else.

                                 +(0..0)+

**If you live along with all the other people  
and are just like them, and conform, and are nice  
you're just a worm –**

**And if you live with all the other people  
and you don't like them and won't be like them and won't conform  
then you're just the worm that has turned,  
in either case, a worm.**

**Worm Either Way by D. H. Lawrence**

**The worm has turned, has it not?  Wonder what will happen now!  Please let me know what you think!**

**Also, I'm having problems with www.fanfiction.net.  They seem to have changed the default rating to G – PG-13.  I couldn't even find Stool of Penance myself for quite a while.  Please drop me a note and tell me what's going on!**


	8. A Child in the Dark

**Only now did I realize how I had learned to lean upon my companions, upon the serene self-confidence of Challenger, and upon the masterful, humorous coolness of Lord John Roxton.  Without them I was like a child in the dark, helpless and powerless.  I did not know which way to turn or what I should do.  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.**

The tea in Veronica's cup vibrated gently.  The T-Rex must be fairly close.  They didn't often get this deep in the ancient forest, as their heavy bodies seldom fit between the sturdy trunks.  She held up her hand.

Marguerite stopped talking and looked towards the open balcony.  She'd heard it too, the deep, almost visceral thud of the heavy footfalls.

"How close?" Marguerite finally whispered.

"Close, no more than a mile.  But I think it's moving away."  Veronica picked up her cup again.  "So you think Bruiser was after this mutant all along?"

When Malone and Marguerite had returned a few hours ago, Bruiser had seemed decidedly restless and unhappy.  He wouldn't let anyone pet him and at dinner had refused to eat table scraps from Marguerite's hand, something he usually loved.  As though looking for a way out, he'd paced the rooms and sniffed everything he could reach.  Veronica rather thought Bruiser might be wanting to leave his happy tree house home and move on.

But as the first tremor from the T-Rex's tread reached them, Bruiser had trotted to the balcony.  Now, he stood on his hind legs, his ears cocked forward and front paws resting on the woven balustrade.  The wolf seemed to listen to the night.

The two men were down in the workshop examining the monster's severed paw that Malone had insisted on carrying back for Challenger's analysis.

"It certainly looked like he was after it.  Ned thinks Bruiser was trying to herd it into a volcanic fissure."  Marguerite sipped her tea.  "I'm inclined to agree with him.  Bruiser would have done it too, if Ned hadn't hog-tied him like a calf in a Wild West show."

Bruiser dropped back and paced a few feet down the railing only to stand up on his hind legs again.  Unmistakably Bruiser was trying to pinpoint the sound's direction.

A bit taken aback by Marguerite's assertion, Veronica thought it might be best to bring her back to reality.  "Marguerite, Bruiser is a remarkable animal, alright.  But he is a dire wolf, not a man.  He can't plan strategy."

Marguerite's tight little smile spoke for her.  _No, of course not, Veronica.  Who'd believe such a thing?_  Veronica instantly regretted her skepticism.  Marguerite didn't need that right now.

Marguerite turned to watch the wolf pacing the balcony.  "Bruiser?" she called softly.  "How far, boy?  Is that T-Rex coming this way?"

Bruiser barked sharply once.  He went into Roxton's former room.  The two women heard a "thunk," followed by a scraping sound and Bruiser reappeared dragging by its leather sling Roxton's largest bore rifle.  He brought it to Marguerite.  She took it, and he sat and barked again.

Marguerite smiled sardonically at Veronica.  "You were saying?"  With practiced clicks of the rifle bolt, she checked the breech as she followed Bruiser to the balcony.  Woman and wolf stood listening.

To herself Veronica conceded that she'd been mistaken about the Rex.  It _was_ getting closer.  She might even be wrong about Bruiser.

There was something about the way Marguerite stood with the wolf, the small patches of moonlight shifting about them when the breeze stirred the branches overhead.  It was reminiscent of … yes, of course:  Marguerite and Roxton.  They'd often talked together on the balcony, watching the moon and stars peek-a-boo through the trees.  Roxton had been an indefatigably romantic suitor and handsome enough to please any woman.  Veronica had often wondered at Marguerite's resistance, but no longer doubted how deeply Marguerite had cared.

From the look on Marguerite's face when Veronica joined her, she was also thinking of Roxton.  The wide-set eyes were decidedly moist.  Taking one hand away from the rifle, Marguerite brushed the corner of one eye, flung her loose hair back from her face, sniffled, grasped the rifle's stock again and brought it up to sight along the barrel.  Veronica heard the thinnest thread of a whispered confession.  "God in Heaven, how I miss him."  Marguerite dropped the rifle back to her waist and sighed her loneliness into the night air.

Sure she hadn't been meant to hear but unwilling to let it pass, Veronica tried what she hoped would be a gentle nudge for Marguerite to say more.  Marguerite seldom spoke of Roxton.  "What was that?  I didn't hear you."

"Nothing.  I said nothing."  The thudding of the T-Rex's steps started up again in a fast one-two beat.  The tree house shook much harder.  The vibration walked a bowl across the table and off the edge.  It scattered oranges and apples in every direction as it shattered on the floor.  One of the live ferns on the fig tree wall fell and splatted on Malone's open journal.  The gigantic carnivore was running.

A few creaks and some scuffling from below announced that the men had joined them on a balcony.  Bruiser still stood on his hind legs, his front paws on the balustrade.  In that posture, he towered over both women.  Completely silent he scanned the dark rainforest.

Marguerite looked at Veronica.  She seemed to make a decision.  "I'm sorry, Veronica.  I did say something.  I said that I missed John."

Veronica pointed into the night.  "I think I see it!  There!  Do you see that movement?  It's a tree going over."

Marguerite brought the rifle back up.  It had been custom-made in London to fit Lord Roxton's long arms.  Even Veronica could see that the walnut stock did not fit into her shoulder well.  Likely Marguerite would get a nasty bruise, but she didn't hesitate.

With a great burst of brilliant electric sparks the T-Rex hit the perimeter fence.  The muzzle flash from Marguerite's rifle added to the fireworks.  She aimed high to hit the Rex in the face and scare it off.  It wouldn't do to hit a vital spot and slaughter a multi-ton dinosaur directly under the tree house.  They'd never be rid of the scavengers and the stink of decaying meat.

Marguerite was working the bolt handle to eject the empty shell, when Bruiser began to bark frantically.  The T-Rex was charging the tree.

Quickly Marguerite returned the rifle to her shoulder.  It went off in chorus with the double–barreled shotgun that Challenger or Malone fired on the balcony below.

Bruiser had dropped to the floor and backed away.  At first Veronica thought he was frightened until she saw him bunch his muscles preparatory to a running leap over the balustrade and off the balcony.  "Marguerite!  Bruiser's going to jump the railing!"

Marguerite spun about.  "Bruiser!  No!  The Rex is leaving!"  As she spoke Marguerite dropped the rifle and ran to deflect Bruiser's launch trajectory.  She collided with him just short of the balustrade, they fell together to the floor and she ended her last sentence with a grunt.

Veronica was standing over them in a second.  "Are you okay, Marguerite?"

"Fine, I'm fine.  Bruiser's fine."  Sitting up, Marguerite threw her arms around Bruiser's neck and buried her face in his neck.  "Stupid Bruiser.  The shotgun messed up the Rex's face.  Didn't you hear him running off?"  She rubbed the wolf's head with her knuckles then pulled it close to hers.  He licked her cheek as if in apology.

Marguerite continued talking.  "Damned wolf.  Doesn't have any more sense of self-preservation than Roxton did.  Always ready to throw his life away.  You're just like him, Bruiser.  That man had a death wish.  Do you know how many times I had to bully him into saving himself?"

Marguerite looked up at Veronica.  "One time … do you remember when that thieving gypsy led us into the robber camp?  Roxton nearly convinced me to kill him, just so I'd have a chance to escape.  I almost … I almost shot him, Veronica.  And he just stood there looking at me as calm and steady as a rock."  Marguerite's grief dissolved into tears.  "Damn you, Roxton!  You weren't supposed to die.  Not alone like that.  I wanted to hold you in my arms.  I wanted to say good-bye."

It was the first time Veronica had seen Marguerite cry her grief out loud.  She joined Marguerite on the floor.  Gently sliding an arm around Marguerite's shoulders, she whispered her own confession.  "I miss him too, Marguerite.  I miss him too."

The two men found the women on the floor, Bruiser behind them, anxiously licking both indiscriminately and making soft chuffing sounds.

Challenger pulled Veronica to her feet.  Malone helped Marguerite.  The professor didn't know what to say.  University didn't teach one how to deal with tears, and seeing these two strong women crying made his own eyes sting.  He could imagine the topic that brought this on.  Roxton's death still hovered at the edge of everyone's thoughts.  Finally Challenger said, "Are you two alright?  The T-Rex's gone back through the fence.  Ned and I are going down to make some repairs."

Marguerite reacted instantly.  "No, don't!  Not yet."  At Challenger's questioning look, Marguerite managed a tremulous smile.  "I can't handle having anyone else I care about in danger just now.  Could you wait until morning?  Please?"  Marguerite's tear-streaked face had none of its customary hardness.  She shook as though the temperature were twenty below instead of in the low nineties.  Challenger recognized the symptoms.  Mild shock.

Yesterday saving Bruiser from the mutated monster had cost Marguerite much of her fragile peace.  Tonight a second near thing with the T-Rex had taken more.  Her emotional reserves gone, Marguerite was reliving the guilt and horror of Roxton's death.

Malone put his hand on Marguerite's shoulder, concern in his face.  He'd become very protective of Marguerite, but Veronica didn't seem jealous.  Like Challenger she knew that Malone was only being loyal to Roxton's memory.  Even when she'd deserved it, Roxton had never wanted Marguerite to suffer.

Malone offered Marguerite a few comforting words.  "The fence just needs a few quick repairs.  We'll be safe."  Bringing his face down close to Marguerite's, he continued in a soft voice.  "Challenger and I won't die.  I promise we won't."

Marguerite looked quickly back and forth from Challenger to Malone, her struggle to believe painted on her face.  Finally, she sighed and said, "I wish I were back in Vienna.  I could use a few sessions with Siggie.  Of course, you'll be fine.  I'm sorry."  Her shivering had subsided.  The shock was wearing off.

Challenger slapped her on the back.  "That's my girl.  We'll be back shortly."  He started for the elevator.

Malone wasn't ready to follow just yet.  He plainly had something to add.  "Do you remember that holy man that took me on the dream quest to London?  Would you like to talk to him?  He was a wonderful listener.  I think he might help."

Marguerite's smile was genuine.  "It sounds like a great idea.  Take my word for it, Freud was more than half witch doctor.  Thanks."

Roxton followed Marguerite into her room; and circling once or twice, tried to do the curl-up thing.  He'd almost gotten the knack of it, but it still felt rather strange.  He lay on the floor, the tip of his tail just inches from his nose, watching Marguerite brush her hair.  She always gave it one hundred strokes.  Roxton knew it was exactly that, as each night this month he'd counted them with her.  She found comfort in the routine, and tonight he found peace in her.

Up until yesterday Roxton had sought his peace in the necessity of his death.  Now without a clear path to follow, he didn't know whether to hope or to despair.  If he wasn't a werewolf, what was he?  Would he eventually become an insane monster, like the mutated Lizard?  Would he stay a wolf for the rest of his life?  And if he couldn't be killed, just how long would his life be?

Marguerite laid the brush on her table and began to twine her hair into a thick dark braid.  Her eyes were closed and a faint Mona-Lisa smile curled her lips.

Roxton had an even more important question.  Should he reveal his survival to Marguerite?  If he couldn't be cured, wouldn't that be just a second death?  Should he do that to her again?

It was worth some careful thought.

Tomorrow they'd take Marguerite to the Zanga village. It was usually a half-day's walk, although distances on the plateau could telescope in a most un-nerving way.  At least it lay in the opposite direction from the lava field.  Roxton would've preferred to go Lizard hunting.  He didn't like the idea of that monster still on the loose, but Marguerite came first.

Marguerite blew out her lamp and crawled in bed.  As her bed ropes creaked, Roxton stretched out full length on the cool floorboards beneath.  He was in a hurry to fall asleep – "To sleep, perchance to dream," as Shakespeare's Hamlet had said.

Roxton snorted, disgusted with himself.  At the sound, Marguerite's hand dropped down and rubbed between his ears.  Damned fantasies, he had no way to make them real but they were all he had.

                             Yo)|(oY

**The great question … which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?"  Attributed to Sigmund Freud in "Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol II" by Ernest Jones.**

**Can we know?  Heck, I don't even know what I want … except to hear from you.  Please drop me a line and tell me what you think.**


	9. Silent Shadows

**I have a vague recollection, as one remembers a bad dream, of rushing about through the woods all round the empty camp, calling wildly for my companions.  No answer came back from the silent shadows.  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.**

"I'm sure Jadna didn't mean it that way, Marguerite," Challenger offered from the other side of the fire.

"Didn't mean it?  Of course, he meant it!" Marguerite hissed back.  Restlessly she re-settled against Bruiser's warm side.  "He said it clearly enough:  I'm a witch!"

Malone, who had a better view of the cave's outer entrance than the rest of them, shushed them.  "He's coming back!"

Veronica ignored Malone.  "To be precise, Jadna said that you're a powerful witch, Marguerite.  A _very_ powerful witch.  I think you frightened him a little.  That's why he went for reinforcements.  I've heard of his mother – they say she's the wisest woman on the plateau."

A regular tapping mixed with shuffling echoed in the outer chamber.  The painted holy man re-entered holding the hand of a woman who looked ancient enough to have witnessed the plateau's original creation.  She walked with the aid of a cane made from a raptor shinbone.  "This is my mother," Jadna declared proudly.  "She has come to see the great witch."

The bent crone hobbled to Marguerite's side and, putting an arthritic knuckle under Marguerite's chin, tilted back her head.  "Yes, Jadna.  I also see the signs.  Tell me your name, child."

With an effort of will, Marguerite forced herself not to flinch.  "Marguerite, old mother.  My name is Marguerite Krux."

The old woman's hand gently stroked Marguerite's hair and ran a twig-like thumb along a cheek.  This time Marguerite couldn't control herself.  She pulled away a little.

The old one smelled of dust and hearth fires.  The cloak of long golden feathers she wore fluttered when she moved.  "This is not your true name, the name your mother and father gave you."

Marguerite looked up, startled.  Her quick glance took in all of her companions.  "No, mother, it is not.  I'm an orphan.  I do not know my name."  Marguerite's eyes stopped on Veronica.  Veronica had been orphaned too, but at least she knew her true name.

"No matter.  You will know your true name when you hear it.  May I sit in your presence, great one?  This old body cannot stand long."

There was a near collision as all the men around the fire moved to help the old woman to the ground.  She settled on the warm patch next to Marguerite with a grateful sigh.  "May-gee-eet, my son tells me you have lost someone."  The old one offered her hand to the Bruiser to sniff then stroked his dark head.  "Someone very close to you."

"My friend, Lord John Roxton."  Marguerite made herself finish it.  "He died nearly two months ago."  Marguerite looked at the old one's filmy old eyes.  Likely she couldn't see very far.  "Jadna met him when Malone took his dream journey last year.  Would you like me to describe John for you?"

"You seek him."  Marguerite opened her mouth to protest, but the old woman continued on.  "You need not.  Your power has already called him to you."

Marguerite had to admit this woman was definitely in the same league as Freud; she was as enigmatic and self-possessed as the Viennese psychoanalyst.  And as infuriating.  Marguerite lifted her eyebrows to express skepticism, but answered, "He is dead, mother, dead and eaten."

"You dream of him every night, do you not?  Your dreams have called him.  They hold him to you.  Your Rok-on is never far, if you know where to look."

Marguerite was glad for the dimness of the golden firelight.  Her friends couldn't see her blush.  "Yes, I dream," she admitted, but lowered her eyes to her hands.

Challenger spoke up.  "You didn't tell us that, Marguerite."

"They're just dreams, George."

Challenger wasn't to be put off.  "Surely you know that here on the plateau even dreams have significance.  If you …"

This is not what Marguerite wanted to talk about, but Challenger was relentless when pursuing a clue.  "George, stop.  Please.  I haven't mentioned the dreams because, well … "  Her voice trailed off.  How was she ever going to say this?  "At night I dream that John comes to me and we … and we …"  For once, Marguerite's boldness failed her.  Her voice trailed off.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bruiser's ears rotate forward.  His panting abruptly stilled.  Somehow he looked surprised.

Challenger's bushy red eyebrows arched.  "Oh.  I'm sorry, Marguerite.  Didn't mean to embarrass you."  Marguerite's hand gestured her forgiveness with a little wave.

The old woman, who'd been watching all of this, turned and beckoned to her son.  "Jadna, bring the gazing bowl and fresh water."  She turned back to Marguerite.  "We shall …"

Marguerite dared to interrupt her.  "You are _not_ going to look into my dreams, mother!"

Amused, Jadna's mother chuckled dryly. "Don't worry, May-gee-eet.  We shall not view your dreams.  Do you have something with you that belongs to this Yahn Rok-on?"

The gazing bowl turned out to be a cluster of a dozen or more clear crystals naturally joined to form a shallow, water-tight cup.  Jadna filled it with a few ounces of water.  With his knife Malone shaved a sliver of leather off the belt that once had been Roxton's and now served as Bruiser's collar.  Then with great show of distress, Marguerite donated several drops of blood.  Bruiser licked her tiny wound until the bleeding stopped.

Kneeling in a tight huddle above the bowl resting on the ground, Marguerite, all of her friends, Bruiser, Jadna, and Jadna's mother looked into the pink-tinged water.  The crystals in the bowl beneath glimmered from the few rays of firelight that filtered between the supplicants.

Marguerite still wasn't too sure about the farseeing.  The whole thing felt too much like undressing in public, and generally she tried to believe only in what could be worn on fingers, wrist and neck.  The plateau tested that creed frequently, but she still wasn't quite convinced.  If the old one didn't begin soon, Marguerite would lose her nerve.

To Marguerite's left Veronica and Malone's blond heads tilted together.  Marguerite heard snatches of what Veronica whispered in Malone's ear, "… don't want … do this ... you …"

Malone tucked Veronica's arm under his, squeezed it to his chest and kissed her cheek.  "You won't."

"What are we looking for?" Challenger asked.

The old one gestured for silence.  "Join your hands, gaze into the bowl and think of Yahn Rok-on and May-gee-eet.  Think of who they have been -- all the memories you have of them, all the feelings you have felt."  Bruiser, between Marguerite and the old woman, whined, something Marguerite seldom heard from the self-possessed wolf.  His black head leaned into Marguerite's side.  She dropped the old one's fragile hand to stroke it.  The old one nodded agreement with the change and her arthritic hand took a handful of Bruiser's neck fur.

"Remember," Jadna and the old one hummed together.  "Remember …"

Her eyes focused on the bowl, Marguerite's world narrowed to her memories of Roxton.  She re-played her entire mantra of Roxton memories:  his handsome albeit frequently unshaven face, the laughing eyes.  The gentle little things he'd done for her every day, and the huge sacrifices he'd never hesitated to offer up.  The hugs, the kisses, the warmth of his body against hers, the smile ...

Marguerite's left hand held Veronica's.  She squeezed it tightly.  Under her right hand Bruiser rumbled.  If he'd been a cat, Marguerite would've thought he purred.

"Look!"  That was Malone's voice.  The water in the bowl had begun to stir like the proverbial tempest in a teapot.  Pictures formed.  A man and a woman, both dressed in leather robes.  He holding a flint-tipped spear, she a child.  A wall of ice loomed behind them.  The scene dissolved and re-formed.  Another man and woman.  He on the back of a rugged little horse and fighting with a bronze sword what looked to be desert nomads, she defending his back with a short spear.  Then there were more scenes, many more.  Scenes through the ages and around the world, in castles, huts, tents and ocean-going ships.  In each a man fought and a woman loved.  It went on and on.

Marguerite gasped.  Roxton's familiar form had materialized in the bowl, cowering under a T-Rex's heavy snout.  Tiny puffs of smoke arose from the pistol he held in his hand.  Straining, Marguerite tried to make out the details of the scene.  Was she there?  Which T-Rex had this been?  But the water in the bowl had been whipped completely to foam.  The scene disappeared, then with a loud crack the bowl shattered, and the foam spread out on the cave's sandy floor.

"What happened?" Veronica asked.  "That felt like an attack!"

Marguerite looked up from helping the old one to a comfortable sitting position.  "Not an attack, a warn off."  Marguerite didn't know how she knew, but she recognized it for the truth.  "My future's hidden, that's all.  Someone or something wants to keep it that way."

Challenger had moved to prop the old one from behind.  He laughed a little.  "Some things never change, Marguerite.  Your life's always been full of secrets."

Jadna knelt beside his mother.  The old woman began to speak.  "May-gee-eet, great one, thank you for blessing this old woman's last years."  She paused for breath.  Apparently the seeing had taken a great deal out of her, but she gestured for Jadna and Challenger to help her to her feet.

The old one seemed to stand much straighter now.  Her feather cloak had slipped off.  Picking it up off the cave floor, Malone settled it back on the thin old shoulders.  The old one reached out for one of Marguerite's hand.  Reluctantly, Marguerite yielded it to her.  The old skin felt slack and dry, the bones brittle and bent.

Marguerite wanted to be anywhere but here.  To have seen Roxton again, even in such a strange way … Marguerite realized that she had no picture of Roxton.  Not even a pencil sketch.  Nothing.

"Both you and Yahn Rok-on have very old souls.  He has protected you through many, many lifetimes.  The men and women we saw – they were all you and your Rok-on.  In each lifetime you call him to you.  And each time he comes: he cannot stay away.  You love each other to the brink of madness and beyond.  I no longer wonder at your longing for Yahn Rok-on.  He is part of you, and you, of him.  Without him, you feel as if you've lost your arm or leg."

Marguerite freed her hand.  Bending over, she picked up a piece of the shattered crystal bowl from under Bruiser's sniffing nose.  She knew the answer to what the old one had said, had known it for a long time.  "No, mother," she said turning the crystal over in her hands.  "I have lost something more vital.  I've lost my heart."

                   (*,*)

**The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,  
and there shall no torment touch them.  
In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and  
their departure is taken for misery,  
And their going from us to be utter destruction:  
but they are in peace.  
For though they be punished in the sight of men,  
yet is their hope full of immortality.  
And having been a little chastised, they shall be  
greatly rewarded: for God proved them, and found  
them worthy for himself.  
Ecclesiasticus, 1:2**

**The cycle of life comes back to us in many ways.  I'm particulary glad you've come back to read more of my story!  Please drop me a line and tell me what you think.  I enjoy hearing from you.**


	10. A Dreadful Thing

**A dreadful thing has happened to us.  Who could have foreseen it?  I cannot foresee any end to our troubles.  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.**

"Well, turn around, Bruiser," Marguerite said, twirling her finger.  "A lady needs privacy you know."  Roxton considered just wagging his tail and ignoring Marguerite's demand, but decided that wisdom was indeed the better part of valor and loped away.  He would check the area for game while Marguerite was occupied.  She'd wisely chosen a spot overlooking the river and dug her hole beneath a tree with appropriately low branches.  Roxton had only one side to guard.  To stay within earshot should be safe enough.

This morning Marguerite had awoken in fine form.  "I thought Jadna was supposed to make me feel better.  I hurt all over, like I shot the rapids on Summerlee River."  It had gone downhill from there, but her steady mosquito-like whine had been music to Roxton's ears.  Marguerite had sounded so … normal.  The rest of the party had seemed to think so too.  No matter how much Marguerite complained, they all just smiled.

Roxton cocked a long ear in Marguerite's direction.  She was humming something, a dreamy sort of waltz that blended with the river's gentle murmur: Strauss.  He listened another moment: Roses from the South.  Yes, that's the name of that one.  It reminded him of white marble ballrooms and warm Italian nights.  That's where Marguerite belonged, in his arms dancing the night away, not here, with a tree branch for her sanitary facility.

Nose in the air, Roxton froze.  One of those abominable tree rats that Marguerite disliked so much hung upside-down above his head, maybe five feet off the ground.  Breakfast had been served.

Roxton had never gotten quite used to eating still-warm raw meat, but he couldn't wait for this to cool.  Marguerite would finish in a minute or two, they'd join the others and re-start the trek home.  Pulling off bites as fast as he could, Roxton swallowed them whole.  _Talk about wolfing down your food_, he thought.

Yesterday's visions in the crystal bowl had re-kindled hope in Roxton's heart.  He and Marguerite – together through the centuries.  It had seemed so right.  But the parade of past lives with Marguerite was not enough; he wanted this one too.  And although Roxton hadn't quite worked out how to reveal his humanity, the tree house seemed the best place.  They now knew he could run the elevator.  There must be a thousand other tricks he could do, enough to make them question who he was and help him communicate.

Perhaps there was just the faintest chance that Challenger could pull off a scientific miracle and return Roxton to a man.  He had to try.

"No!  Get your ugly claws off me!  I warn you I'm in no mood for this!"

Roxton jerked his head up from his meal.  Marguerite was in trouble again.  Oh damn, and the morning had gone so well.  That woman attracted disaster like fresh kill drew blowflies.  Marguerite's angry cry had sounded more exasperated than afraid, but being interrupted in the water closet tended to do that to anyone.

Two Lizards held a cursing, struggling Marguerite between them.  They were some of Tribune's troops, from their insignia.  Roxton was beginning to hate Lizards.  Marguerite was trying to fasten up her divided skirt and making a poor job of it.  The soldier on her right had a short-bladed gladius in his hand.  He threatened Marguerite's throat with it and she stilled.  The other Lizard dropped the arm he'd held.  He began to undo his belt.

"Can't we work something out here?" Marguerite asked with a nervous smile.  The Lizard with the sword tickled her throat with the sharp point.

"I believe that's what Marius is trying to do, Human.  Be patient.  He'll have it ready in a second."  Then to his companion, the Lizard said, "Could you hurry it up, Marius?  I'm hungry and she smells absolutely delicious."

Roxton had hid upriver a little to their right.  He'd seen enough, but he had to get that sharp point away from Marguerite.  Rolling a growl in his throat, Roxton stepped out from his hiding place.  Both Lizards looked his way and Marguerite cried Bruiser's name.

Good, the wolf had everyone's attention.  Now to give Marguerite her chance.  Roxton stalked forward, his neck ruff standing up on end and his black lips curled back to show long sharp teeth.  Lizards understood sharp teeth very well, having so many themselves.

As soon as the gladius dropped away from Marguerite's throat and moved in his direction, Roxton launched himself into the air.  A certain freedom of attack had come with Roxton's immortality.  He didn't care if the Lizard's sword skewered him or not.  In fact, he rather hoped it would.  If the sword were in Roxton, it couldn't be in Marguerite.

That didn't mean the blow wouldn't be agony.  The sword went deeply into Roxton's gut, but the leap had knocked his Lizard on the ground.  He heard Marguerite taking care of hers.  Then the pain went beyond imagining as the sword carved up toward Roxton's ribs.  The torture held his complete attention and for a moment the world went black.

He came to in time to see Marguerite's booted foot kick Roxton's Lizard in the head.  Vaguely aware again, Roxton tried to rise.  The sword stuck in the unconscious Lizard's hand and as he shifted, cut him even more.  Roxton collapsed to the ground and lay still.  Someone else was going to have to get this blade out of him.  He couldn't bear to make another move.

"That's it, Bruiser.  Don't move.  Challenger is coming.  Don't move," Marguerite's voice shook, but she was trying to keep it sweet and soothing.  Roxton flitted in and out of consciousness from the pain, and he hoped she'd pull the sword out soon.  This was getting rather much.

"Oh Lord."  That was Challenger.  The others must have heard the battle and come to help.  Roxton's right eye squinted up into Challenger's face and he licked his stroking hand.  Behind Challenger Roxton could see Malone's blond head.  He was trying to get Marguerite away.

Marguerite wouldn't go.  With a practiced twist, she pulled out of Malone's grip and returned to Roxton's side.  "He's still alive, George.  Can you help him?" croaked Marguerite, her eyes locked on the wolf.  She knelt down at his head.

Challenger didn't answer.  His fingers were exploring around the protruding blade.  Involuntarily Roxton jerked away.  There was something going on behind Roxton -- people moving about and a low murmur of harsh voices but Marguerite's eyes held his and he didn't look away.

"Marguerite, you'd best stand back.  This has to come out, and he'll want to bite anything in reach."

Marguerite shook her head.  On her back the thick knot of brunette hair flopped from side to side.  "No, do it."

Challenger licked his lips and bent over.  "Sorry, Bruiser," Challenger said.  "Brace yourself.  This is really going to hurt."  Challenger put one hand on the sword's pommel, and pulled it out a little.  Roxton's legs spasmed involuntarily from the pain, but he tried to lie still.  Challenger was trying to make sure he wouldn't hurt Marguerite.

"Don't torment him, George!  Do it!"  Marguerite's hand caressed Roxton's neck.

"Okay," Challenger said.  He took a breath.  "Here it goes."  Then with a long steady pull, the sword came out.

Roxton yowled.  Lord God, that had hurt!  Surprised he hadn't passed out again, Roxton lay shaking in reaction.  Marguerite's hands held Roxton's head and her voice whispered soothing nothings in his ear.  "My handsome, brave wolf.  I love you, Bruiser.  Don't die.  Please don't die.  Get better for your Marguerite."

Challenger was checking the wound on Roxton's belly.  "He's not bleeding.  I can't believe it.  Bruiser's not bleeding.  The cut is closing up."

An unfamiliar voice came from Roxton's other side, where he couldn't see.  "Believe it, Doctor Challenger.  It appears your pet has been infected with our virus.  This is unfortunate indeed."

**"Does it matter?" asked Lord John, who was standing with his hands in his pockets close to the window.  "If we have to go, what is the use of holdin' on?  You don't suppose there's any chance for us?"  The Poison Belt by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.**

"I don't remember, Milady.  Honestly, I don't.  I suppose the monster might have been one hundred thirty or forty pounds, maybe more.  My mind wasn't exactly on weights and measures at the time."  Once again Marguerite was using Roxton's wolf body for a backrest.  Her right arm draped over his shoulders while her hand raked nervously through his fur, but her left hand stayed firmly on the rifle at her side.

Roxton quivered.  Feeling Marguerite's fingers all over his naked body had taken quite a bit of getting used to.  Often, after only a few minutes of such petting, Roxton would get up and walk away.  Tonight, however, he could smell the fear on Marguerite.  He made himself lie still under the roving hand.

Although the Lizards had brought answers to Roxton's questions, the news hadn't been good.

A strange sort of female Lizard perched on a log to Marguerite's right, about a quarter way 'round the smoky campfire.  Instead of a raptor-Lizard mutant, she was sort of a Lizard-cum-bird.  Wobbling every time she shifted weight, the little female seemed unsteady on those brightly feathered legs.  The stalwart General Gengal reclined next beyond.  Now and then the General's hand possessively strayed to the female to stabilize her balance.

The General had introduced his female companion as Milady Alchemist and as the leader of His Imperial Majesty Tribune's Scientific Expedition to the Outer Provinces.  This rag-tag troop hardly deserved such a grandiose designation.  The twenty or so soldiers had clearly been on the trail for quite a while.  All the Lizards carried worn and muddy gear, and their uniforms hung in rags.  Right now at a separate campfire about twenty feet away, the troop celebrated what seemed their first decent meal in quite a while.  The General had ordered the two Lizards who'd attacked Marguerite to be executed for bestiality, and cook had made everyone a stew.  A rich, spicy scent floated to them on the night air.  The humans had declined their share.

Around this campfire the circle of friends and former adversaries was two short -- Malone and Veronica were fetching from the tree house the severed paw from the fight two nights ago.  They were expected at this rendezvous by morning and Challenger and the alchemist would work on an antidote while the rest of them continued in the direction of the lava field for some Lizard hunting.

As he still had a grudge to settle, Roxton was all for that.  And although Tribune had sent a letter asking them to lend a hand, Challenger had made the decision.  "We'll help if I can work with Milady on her antidote tomorrow.  We need to find a cure for Bruiser here.  I refuse to let him die."

General Gengal had, of course, disapproved.  To him, basing cooperation on a pet's life must seem rather weak.  Milady, however, had enthusiastically agreed.  Thanks to gunpowder, Doctor Challenger's scientific reputation among the Lizard scientific community ranked only slightly less than divinity.

Milady fluttered her blue-feathered avian arms.  "But you say Gorkal had a Raptor's neck and tail?  That's new.  We cut off his legs and arms several times in the laboratory during the regeneration tests, and a guard punched in his face when he escaped.  But a whole new spinal column.  I wonder if it's a more advanced stage of the infection, or if it was just another wound …"

Sitting to Marguerite's left, Challenger's disapproving expression spoke volumes.  Roxton had a feeling the good doctor didn't include vivisection as part of his investigative repertoire.

Marguerite had stopped the nervous petting.  She'd pulled her rifle a little closer and begun to rock on her buttocks, arms wrapped around her legs.  Marguerite was certainly wound up tight.  Probably had something to do with that crusty General Gengal, a good soldier even if a bit harsh in his discipline.  Earlier the General had decreed Marguerite's virus-infected pet really ought to be put down.

In dealing with Lizards in the past Marguerite had relied on her most devious bargaining skills.  This time her rejoinder had been inflexible:  If they valued their lives, no Lizard touched the wolf.  "What I want to know is how to kill this Gorkal," Marguerite asked.  "When … when Bruiser was infected, he bit all the way through Gorkal's spine and nearly cut off the head.  That should have been enough to kill anything."

"Humans!" General Gengal snorted and looked away.  "Primitive species."

The alchemist looked affectionately at her male companion.  "What General Gengal means, Miss Krux, is that decapitating a Lizard won't necessarily kill him, at least not right away."  Tapping her quasi-wing on the General's back, she continued, "Lizards have a second rudimentary brain cluster between their shoulders, just about here.  A remnant from our dinosaur ancestors."

Forgetting Marguerite's proximity, Roxton stood up.  That gave Marguerite a good shove, and she tumbled away.  "Hey, Bruiser!"  He licked her cheek in apology, but paced around quite excited.  _That_ finally explained how that damned monstrosity had up and walked away after he'd lopped off its head.

The General's hard Lizard eyes were following him.  "Human, I must re-iterate that eventually your pet may have to be destroyed.  In the meantime, you really shouldn't let him lick you.  He might infect you too.  And one thing I _don't_ need is another crazed mutant to track down."  Roxton stopped and looked at the General, then at Marguerite.  Had he unwittingly spread this damned affliction?  No, that couldn't be right.  He'd licked all of his friends over the last two months.  None of them had re-grown so much as an extra patch of furry skin.

Marguerite put into words what Roxton couldn't say.  "He's licked us all at one time or another, and none of us are infected."  She held up her finger.  "Look I cut myself last night and Bruiser licked it for me.  You can still see it.  Look!"  Marguerite slid over to the alchemist's perch.  The Lizard dutifully looked down at the tiny wound Marguerite had made for the farseeing.

"Indeed it is still an open incision, General Gengal.  And the regenerative capability shows up immediately.  Perhaps the infection isn't advanced enough to make the wolf contagious.  Besides, even I can tell her pet's not mad."

Then, as Milady continued, a certain note of uneasiness entered her shrill Lizard voice.  "In some ways Gorkal's mutated regeneration was our most successful.  All our other regeneration enhancements have lasted only a few minutes at most.  We studied him in the laboratory for several months, trying to isolate the mutation factor.  Then toward the end, the virus took Gorkal's mind.  That's when he bit me and I became infected.  If we'd disposed of him as soon as the mutation showed up, all of this wouldn't have happened.  I can only blame myself."

"It's not your fault, Milady.  You only followed His Majesty's orders," the General tried to reassure her.

Apparently, when the alchemist was uncertain, she fluttered.  Her quasi-wings came up and the General's steadying hand immediately went out.  A dislodged blue feather floated lazily from her wing down to the ground.  Picking it up, the General turned away from the fire.  His fingers gently caressed the feather's length – unseen except by the keen-eyed wolf that had circled around that way.  The General's head lifted and he looked directly into Roxton's eyes.  _Know just how you feel,_ Roxton thought.  _Sometimes love hurts._

The General was tucking the feather inside his stained leather cuirass when Milady spoke again.  "Human, you need to understand this:  I can't guarantee that Doctor Challenger and I will create an antidote effective for every species.  It may just work for Lizards."

Roxton trotted a short distance to the edge of the forest, just beyond the closest Lizard sentry.  He stood nose up looking into the night, letting his nose test the breeze.  So far they'd avoided any untoward encounters with dinosaurs and tonight Roxton hoped the large campfires would keep them away.  Dinosaurs hated fire.  Returning, he lay down by Marguerite and Challenger.

Marguerite had been saying something vehement about working on the problem until they found a cure for everyone.  Challenger had Marguerite's hand in both of his.  With a freckled thumb he stroked the back of her fingers.  "Don't you worry, Marguerite.  Milady Alchemist seems to know what she's about.  We'll fix Bruiser up."  Challenger dropped Marguerite's hand to scratch Roxton's furry ears.  "And don't you worry either, Bruiser.  We won't let you run crazy."

_Damned straight you won't,_ Roxton thought.  Werewolf or mutated monster, he'd throw himself in that volcanic fissure before he'd harm his friends.

Milady Alchemist hopped off her perch and awkwardly waddled on her mutated legs in Challenger's direction.  "You know, Doctor Challenger, the most fascinating thing about Bruiser is that he doesn't have any visible mutations.  The virus seems to infect every creature differently.  Do you suppose Bruiser has some sort of sub-dermal …"

As the conversation around the campfire sank into scientific jargon, Roxton rose to his feet.  If he stayed here, Marguerite would stand guard over him and get little rest.  She'd sleep best alone and he intended to hunt down a certain Lizard.  Ignoring Marguerite's cries, Roxton loped off into the night.

                                   )0U0(

I'm sorry.  No quote tonight.  Fanfic.net seems to have lost my story.  I'm going to try uploading this chapter to see if it will kick it out.

I will be out of town for a long weekend so the next chapter will be Monday.  Sorry for the wait.


	11. In the Morning

"We shall know in the morning," said Lord John.  "It was close to us--not farther than the glade."  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The gleaming radiance of dawn light on the plateau easily put to shame a European sunrise.  This morning's misty air glowed with life, and Marguerite felt as if she stood inside an enormous pearl.  The new day promised every possibility.  Marguerite knew from experience that the new day lied.  She took another sip of the excellent Lizard coffee and turned away.

Lizards breaking camp walked past her carrying packs and mysterious pieces of this and that.  Two lugged between them a black roll of capture net.  All over the open glade where they'd bivouacked last night, twenty or so Lizard voices rumbled and squawked.  Roxton would've loved all this safari-like activity.

Marguerite spun on her heel then frowned when she found no one close.  For a moment she'd felt someone … no, that was a lie … she'd felt _Roxton_ standing at her back.  But there was nothing to see except the steadily strengthening morning light and the busy Lizards.

Perhaps the coffee had called Roxton so clearly to mind.  The sturdy old Lizard cook had made a campfire-perked pot nearly equal to the nectar Roxton used to brew.  "That's the last of the coffee beans," Cook had said, "but today I'm celebrating."

Roxton would never be far, Jadna's mother had told Marguerite.  And that she could find him if she knew where to seek.  _Oh blast_, Marguerite remembered thinking at the time, _another bloody treasure hunt_, but ever since she'd looked in every face that came her way and behind every tree.  Hoping.  Wishing.

In her pocket Marguerite carried the letter from His Imperial Majesty Tribune to his good friend Lord Roxton.  The curlicues of Lizard script went on at great length, but when you took away the "hail's" and "herein's" and "now therefore's," the message had been quite simple, "Salutations, old friend.  Hope the plateau treats you well.  If you can, please help Milady Alchemist.  She has a little situation."

Milady had been devastated to learn of Roxton's death.  "Oh, that won't make His Imperial Majesty happy at all!  He's very fond of your Lord Roxton."  Roxton could make a friend out of almost anyone.

Marguerite looked into Milady and Challenger's impromptu laboratory – a flimsy palm-frond lean-to the Lizards had woven this morning in less than fifteen minutes.  Both scientists were bent over an unsteady bench loaded down with trays and flasks.  They didn't look up until Marguerite's shadow blocked their light.  Challenger waved a farewell.  "Good luck," Milady chirped.

Marguerite tossed out the last dregs of her coffee and handed the tin cup to the Lizard cook.  He added it to the top of his pack then slung the bag on a stack under a tall tree.  Unburdened, Cook grabbed his crossbow and trotted for the gathering troop.

Today everyone would hunt with only the bare necessities.  For Marguerite, that meant a rifle, a pistol and plenty of ammunition; and for Malone it seemed the same.  His shotgun in his hand, Malone caught up to Marguerite as she walked in General Gengal's direction.  "Good morning, Marguerite."

Late last night, or more likely very early this morning, a gentle hand had shook Marguerite awake and Challenger had whispered in her ear.  "Malone and Veronica have found us.  Milady and I are going to start some tests.  Get what sleep you can."  Soon after she'd heard the rustles and whispers of Veronica and Malone settling down.  Veronica's soft, "Thanks, Ned," was followed by a watery sloshing sound and the gurgle of swallowing.  In a few seconds it was quiet once again.  The two must have run every step to have returned so soon.

Marguerite nodded Malone a "good morning," but as they walked he looked around Marguerite's feet and behind her.  "Where's Bruiser?"

"Gone," was all that Marguerite could manage without cracking her cool façade.  What had first seemed a miracle -– the instant healing of Bruiser's wound -– had turned out to be a curse.  If that Lizard general had had his way, Bruiser would've been in last night's stew.  And although Marguerite was glad Bruiser had taken to woods, she still worried.  This damned plateau seemed determined to take everything she loved, and it gave so little back.

Malone missed a step.  His immediate alarm for Bruiser made it even harder for Marguerite to stay calm.  Malone always wore his heart on his sleeve.  He would've made a terrible spy, even more so than the bluff and forthright Roxton.

"Gengal didn't …"

"No.  Bruiser ran off last night.  I'm sure he's fine, but Herr General's about to have kittens."

Malone chuckled, a tired sound that was more cough than laugh.  "That would be sight to see."

"Wouldn't it though?"  Marguerite stopped walking and turned to Malone.  "I wanted to thank you for the fast turn around, Ned.  You don't know how much it means to me."

"I think I do," Malone murmured in answer.  He kissed Marguerite on the forehead.  "Bruiser means a lot to all of us.  Don't worry about him, okay?"  He looked behind her.  "Oh, General.  Good morning.  What did you have in mind for today's marching order?"

Far ahead of Marguerite, Malone's blond hair gleamed among the iron-helmed Lizards like a gold nugget among coals.  It seems in the Lizard soldiers' battle creed, women were bad luck so Marguerite held the troop's hindermost position.  A typically male paranoia, but she couldn't complain.  To her left and a little behind, she caught occasional glimpses of Bruiser's black body drifting in and out among the trees.  As far she knew, no one else had seen him.

Veronica had stayed with Challenger and Milady, and if the two scientists achieved a cure, would track down the Lizard hunting party.  But before they'd headed out, Marguerite had made a point of thanking Veronica for last night's trip.  Veronica had looked even more tired than Malone, but had smiled and hugged Marguerite.  "My pleasure, big sister."

Marguerite perked up.  Malone's gold head was dropping back and had about reached the Lizards lugging the capture net.  Maybe he had good news.  After a morning of walking in what seemed like circles, she needed something cheery.

The blue eyes held a spark of excitement, but Malone kept his voice down low.  "Their tracker's picked up Gorkal's spoor.  Says it's just a few hours old."  He paused and looked at Marguerite.  "Bruiser's tracking him too.  His prints overlay Gorkal's quite a bit."

Marguerite glanced at him then, nodding sharply to her left, she whispered, "He's over there."

"Huh?  Who?"  Malone must be exhausted to be so obtuse.

"Bruiser!" Marguerite hissed.

"Oh shit!"  Malone squinted in that direction.  "Better tell him to stay away.  The General issued a shoot-on-sight order.  That's what I came back to tell you."

"Why that devious bastard!  I'm going to go tell him …"  Un-slinging her rifle, Marguerite had started toward the head of the column.

Malone grabbed Marguerite's arm and yanked her back.  "You're forgetting how hard Bruiser is to kill, and Gengal's Lizards only have bows and arrows.  He'll be okay, if he just stays out of sight."

Marguerite pulled her arm out of Malone's hand.  "They've got swords, Malone!  Bruiser's not a Lizard!  Cut off his head and that's the end of him!"

Keeping an admirable grip on his calm, Malone pointed out, "They'd have to get pretty close for that.  Let's just keep him away, okay?"

Marguerite's anger collapsed into a tired sigh.  She shook her head.  "Okay, I'll do what I can."  She looked sidelong at the rainforest to her left.  She hadn't seen Bruiser's shadow for several minutes now, "But that wolf has a mind of his own."

"Sure does."  Malone kept step with her for a few minutes.  The Lizards had pulled ahead.  They'd have to double time if they wanted to catch up.  "Look, why don't you come with me to the head of the column?  Freak out the Lizards?  I don't like you back here by yourself."

Marguerite had been about to protest that a dire wolf guarded her back, but changed her mind.  If she were up front, Gengal might think twice about shooting Bruiser down.

"Hey!" Marguerite exclaimed as they pulled even with the last Lizard in the line.  "Is it just me, or did we go by that mimic plant a few hours ago?"  The colorful, chiming mimics were fairly rare on the plateau.  Marguerite was sure they'd passed this large specimen not long after breaking camp.

Malone looked to where Marguerite pointed.  His particular interest in mimic plants went back to his first day on the plateau.  One had nearly eaten Malone for lunch until Veronica saved him.

"I think you're right.  I remember that.  Come on!  We'd better find out what's going on."  As Malone and Marguerite broke into a trot, the barks and howls of an angry wolf sounded up ahead.

                         [x}0v0{x]

After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things."  
The Revelation to John, 4:1, King James Version of the Holy Bible

Oh dear, dark goings on.  I wonder what happens now?  Please drop a note.  The story's getting very close to the end.


	12. Curupuri

Curupuri is the spirit of the woods, something terrible, something malevolent, something to be avoided.  None can describe its shape or nature, but it is a word of terror along the Amazon.  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Tapping on Challenger's shoulder, Veronica offered him a strip of jerked iguanodon, an unappetizing luncheon but the best they had.  "George, you need to eat.  You're not going to do Bruiser and Milady much good if you pass out from hunger."

Challenger looked up from the strange Lizard microscope – a stacked series of graduated lenses – and shook his head.  "Uh, I ate last night, I think.  Anyway, I'll be all right for a while.  Offer it to Milady."

"I already did.  She said to give it to you."

"Well, then perhaps you should eat it yourself."  Challenger waved his hand for her to move aside.  "If you don't mind?  You're blocking my light."

A while ago Challenger had run out of the lean-to and danced Veronica around in a jig.  "Mold!" he'd cried.  "Can you believe it?  _Penicillin notatum_!"  Throwing handfuls of grass in the air like an ape, he'd laughed himself silly.  "Fruit mold!"  Sobering a little, he'd returned to microscope, but she still heard him giggling now and then.  "Plain old green mold!  Incredible!  If only I were in London!  I'd win the Nobel Prize!  The lives I could save!"

Veronica hoped it was a good sign.  As she trimmed off slivers of chewy meat, she wandered around the glade, thinking about last night's marathon run with Malone.  He'd carried a torch for their entire return trip.  A risk, since a moving light often attracted predators, but one they'd decided to take to increase their speed.  Bruiser was family.

No point in wearing herself out more today, Veronica thought.  Choosing a spot in a giant fern's shade, Veronica sat cross-legged and listened to the rainforest's bustling mid-day traffic.  Parrots squawked, monkeys chattered, a boar grunted down the hill.  Reassuring, everyday plateau sounds.  They hadn't seen any dinosaurs near this glade, but Veronica didn't let her guard fall down.  The plateau's terrors easily snuck up on anyone - as Roxton had learned to everyone's regret.

Leaving the lean-to's dark interior, Milady Alchemist hopped across the clearing and joined Veronica.  "My, it's such a pleasure to work with a scientist of Doctor Challenger's genius.  I shared with him just a few of our findings and he's creating miracles.  I swear -- miracles!  Is he always this brilliant?"

Veronica laughed.  "Shhh!" she said holding a finger to her lips.  "Don't let him hear you!  We'd never see the end of it!"

Crinkling her flat Lizard face, Milady laughed too.  "All great males are like that.  Even my General Gengal has his days."  She squinted at the hot sky.  "The mid-meal hour?  Oh goodness, no wonder I'm hungry.  Do you have any more of that, uh, what was it you offered me?  Jerky?"

"It's jerked iguanodon, Milady."  Veronica had begun to trim Milady a largish bite – the Lizard had plenty of sharp teeth for chewing -- when she stopped.  "Do you hear that?"

Milady's head went up.  "I don't hear anything."

Veronica arose and scanned the rainforest's velvet green.  "Precisely, something's scared the game.  Challenger!" Veronica shouted back over her shoulder.  "Challenger, we're going to need your rifle!"  He didn't answer.  "Challenger?"  She turned toward the lean-to.

Its woven palm fronds simply burst apart, bits of green, sticks and equipment flying away as from a small explosion.  Veronica gasped, then saw Challenger running from the collapsing roof with two flagons in his hands – but no rifle.  He ran away from Veronica and Milady, toward the far side of the glade.

A strange, mal-formed creature charged out of the showering debris.  It was the mutant, Gorkal – it had to be.  No raptor had a head like that.

Gorkal stopped.  "Where is she?  Smell her.  Smell that one."  His head rotated with a weaving wobble.  His eyes blinked unevenly, first one then the other.  Veronica had seen brain-fly infested dinosaurs grimace like that.  The parent fly crawled up their nose and laid eggs that ate away the cerebrum.  "Pain!  Stop pain!  Please!"  Gorkal's wail trailed off as he turned toward Veronica and Milady's position.

Veronica could almost feel sorry for Gorkal.  He hadn't asked to be a failed Lizard experiment.  And he suffered.  Anyone could see that.

On the other side of the glade, Challenger put down his flasks and waved his arms and yelled.  "Over here, Gorkal!  Look over here!  Come and get me!"

Gorkal refused to be drawn away.  He'd seen the Lizard alchemist standing next to Veronica.  "Mi-la-dy!"  Gorkal filled that single drawn out word with profound desperation.  "Pain!"  Breaking into a lop-sided floppy lope he headed straight for Milady.

Squawking, Milady made a flying leap away from Veronica and tried to scale the stair of piled Lizard packs and fly up to a high branch.  Gorkal followed.  Packs ripped open under his claws and flew away from Milady's thrashing legs.  Her feathered arms flapped in desperation.

The safe tree branch stayed out of reach.  Gorkal had Milady's leg in his talons.  "Stay away, Human!" Milady cried as she and Gorkal slid off the pile.

The snarling, snapping tumble of Gorkal and Milady scattered ripped packs in every direction.  A blanket caught in a claw, a tin cup flew up.  The ground began to show ugly streaks of red.

Milady had the usual allotment of sharp Lizard teeth and knew how to use them.  She could briefly hold her own.  But Gorkal had both teeth and claws – and an insane brain as well.

Crouching in a battle stance, Veronica could only watch.  She made unconscious ineffective thrusts with the knife she held.  If she joined the fight, they'd just have another mutant to cure or kill, but she couldn't stand by and watch Milady be chewed up.  She had started forward when she felt Challenger's hand on her arm.  He re-iterated her thought.  "No, Veronica.  We can't help.  We'd just be adding to their problem."

A new sound joined the harsh cacophony resounding in the glade -- barking.  Bruiser's black form ran past Veronica and Challenger.  Without missing a single beat he joined the Lizard brawl.  Bruiser's jaws locked on under Gorkal's chin.  The mutant tried to whip him back and forth, but Bruiser outweighed it and could not be tossed aside.

Freed of her attacker, Milady rolled away and stood up with blood, feathers and dirt caked on every limb.  She was re-generating.  New blue feathers burst through the muck even as Veronica watched.  Her Lizard limbs thinned and bent more.  Judging from the expression on Milady's face and the moans she made, the process involved a lot of pain.  She looked as if she were being pierced with a hundred darts and every bone broken and re-set.

The pounding crash of multiple feet announced the return of General Gengal's troop.  They must have been trailing Bruiser through the rainforest; and from the ready bows, drawn swords and bared Lizard teeth they'd been out for blood – preferably from a wolf.

It took General Gengal a confused moment to reassess.  His Lizards, mindful of spreading the infection, held back waiting for a signal.  The General's eyes quickly flicked from Milady's bloody, contorting form, then to the destroyed lean-to and scattered packs, and finally to the combatants in the dirt.  He'd waved for his soldiers to stand down just as Malone and Marguerite arrived.

Gorkal's neck had ceased to toss.  Bruiser's death-like grip had choked off Gorkal's air supply.  The wolf had his opponent down and the Lizard had passed out.

Marguerite tried to grab the General's arm and hold him back, but he and a small clutch of Lizards rushed in.  "The net!  Hollal, Gabrilik!  Net them up!" the General cried and seconds later, a dark flat shape spun through the air.  Releasing his grip on Gorkal's neck, Bruiser raced away at the last second.  The net settled over the mutant's oblivious body and ten strong lizards wrapped it tight.  At last the fugitive had safely been brought to ground.

**                             8(**)8**

**The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,  
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,  
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,  
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,  
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,  
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail,  
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress  
      not to the audience,  
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own,  
      or the indication of his own.**

**Excerpt from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman**

**We are what we are, or what we will be, or what we think we are, or what we want to be.  Please drop me a line and we'll talk philosophy.**


	13. Wonderful But Dangerous

Finally he waved us to come on, holding up his hand as a signal for caution.  His whole bearing made me feel that something wonderful but dangerous lay before us.  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

"There _has_ to be some other way, Challenger."  Although Marguerite had tried to keep her voice in control, she'd sounded harsh and frightened.  This was a cure?  Challenger's proposal sounded more like a death sentence.

Bruiser had been watching Challenger and Marguerite from a shady spot a few feet away.  His sharp eyes tracked their every gesture.  At Marguerite's protestation, the wolf trotted to Challenger's side and nosed his pant leg.  Sitting next to him, Bruiser looked up at Marguerite.  She glanced down accusingly.  "Oh, so you're taking his side, are you, Bruiser?  Shows what you know."

Marguerite decided Challenger's folded smile and soft blue eyes were meant to be coaxing.  He badly wanted Marguerite to agree to the treatment he'd proposed.  She could imagine what he didn't say -– _for your own good, Marguerite, as well as his._  As if Challenger would know what was best for either her or Bruiser.  Challenger continued on.  "Milady's willing to go through with it.  And I think if Bruiser had a voice, he'd say so too.  He's a brave fellow."

Brave to the point of stupidity, Marguerite thought, if he'd consent to what Challenger proposed:  a bullet to the heart followed by an injection that might – just _might_, mind you – return him to normalcy when his heart began to beat again … if his heart began to beat again.  There were no guarantees.

Marguerite snorted.  "I'm not surprised Milady agreed.  For her, there's you and then there's God.  But Bruiser – he can't make his own choice.  We have to choose for him."  Marguerite took Challenger's hands in hers.  "Look, can't we wait and do more tests?  The infection won't be lethal for weeks."

That was at the heart of the matter and what they'd just learned this afternoon -- proof Gorkal's infection eventually killed its carrier.  An hour after Gorkal's capture, when he'd finally stopped struggling against the net, the soldiers had unwrapped him a little bit.  It'd been horrible -- his mutated flesh had begun to fall off his bones in bloody strings.  The virus's healing had reversed and now it destroyed instead – or at least that's what Challenger had told Marguerite.  No wonder poor Gorkal had screamed in pain until one of Gengal's soldier knocked him out.

Milady had been very upset.  Tapping Gorkal's limp form with a now completely avian leg, she'd asked Challenger, "Oughtn't we try your cure on him?"

Challenger had shaken his head.  "No, his infection's end stage.  I'm afraid he's beyond our help."  He'd gently patted Milady's feathered shoulder, which was, after her further transformation to bird, about level with his waist.  "And I've only two syringes full of the _penicillin notatum_.  Gorkal destroyed the rest."

Later Gorkal had died in agony, his flesh eventually becoming little more than bloody pulp.  Bruiser had watched in what seemed morbid fascination until Marguerite wrapped a hand in his wolf collar and pulled him away.

Challenger's hands squeezed Marguerite's.  "Look, would you want Bruiser to suffer like Gorkal?  Milady doesn't know when she and Bruiser may run mad.  It could be a month from now – or tomorrow.  Gorkal lasted three months in the laboratory, but Bruiser's a mammal.  His metabolism's much faster."  Marguerite tried to interrupt, but on a roll, Challenger just kept talking.  "And General Gengal can't afford to take any chances, Marguerite.  He won't complete his mission until he eradicates the disease.  If we can't cure Bruiser, the General will have to put him down."

"Over my dead body!"  Marguerite snapped and stepped away from Challenger.  Automatically her hand settled on her pistol butt.

Challenger didn't take offense.  Marguerite wasn't thinking of shooting him.  "Marguerite, please!  Gengal would have to destroy Milady too.  He doesn't like it any more than you do."

Marguerite looked across the glade to where the General's hand stroked Milady's feathered wing.  Malone and Veronica sat just beyond, hands intertwined, talking.  Behind them, in a larger open space cleared of grass and litter, Lizard soldiers stacked dry wood for a funeral pyre.  Although they were only half-finished, they already had a waist-high pile about six feet square.  It would take a very large and hot fire to cremate three corpses.  "No, I suppose the General doesn't like it very much at all," Marguerite admitted.  "But that doesn't mean Bruiser has to die today."

Challenger apparently had one more card to play.  Marguerite had never figured the professor for a gambler, but what he said next seemed very much a roll of the dice.  "Marguerite, do you remember Ned's story about how he persuaded Bruiser to come to the tree house?  That he just told Bruiser how sick you were?"  Marguerite nodded.  "Why don't you ask Bruiser what he wants?"

Marguerite's eyes turned away so Challenger couldn't see the pain.  "Oh, George.  He's an animal.  He doesn't understand what's going on."

"Are you sure?  You just said we had to choose for him.  Why don't you give him a chance to choose for himself?"

Marguerite began to shake her head, then thought better of it.  If Challenger wanted to play the fool, she'd be happy to oblige.  She offered Bruiser her hand to sniff.  "What do you think, Bruiser?  Is today a good day to die?"  Bruiser barked once and wagged his tail.

Marguerite looked back to Challenger's intent face.  "A bullet to the heart?"

"Yes, to stop it temporarily.  We'll inject the vaccine before it starts beating again.  It's important for the _penicillin notatum_ extract to reach the whole body at the same time."

Marguerite drew the revolver in her holster – one of Roxton's ivory-handled .45's -- and handed it to Challenger.  He looked surprised.  "I'm going to ask Bruiser his opinion.  Just hold it out by the barrel for a moment, please."

Marguerite backed off several paces.  With a wave she summoned Bruiser to her side.  Putting her hand under the heavy dark muzzle, Marguerite pulled the dire wolf's head up until the green eyes locked with hers.  She licked her lips then said quietly, "Bruiser, if you want to try Challenger's cure, bring me Roxton's gun."

Marguerite watched in anguished fascination as Bruiser instantly wheeled and trotted to Challenger's side.  His powerful jaws mouthed the pistol's ivory grip and he tugged the gun from Challenger's loose hold.  Returning to Marguerite, he sat down in front of her.  Not wanting to take the gun, she turned away, but Bruiser wouldn't let her escape.  He arose, circled to Marguerite's right and nudged her hand with the pistol barrel.

Challenger spoke behind her.  "Take it, Marguerite.  He's told you what he wants."

**                            +=(o;o)=+**

**We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.**

**From The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics by Max Planck**

**In other words, nothing is certain.  What will happen now?  The only way to tell is read the next (and final!) chapter!**

**Waiting to hear from you!  Please write soon.**


	14. One Way or Another

**But we are honor bound to go back and have them out or see it through with them.  So you can make up your soul, young fellah my lad, for it will be one way or the other before evenin'.  The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.**

Challenger's hand stroked Bruiser's chest.  It paused at a point just under the wolf's foreleg, about the third or fourth rib down.  Challenger took Marguerite's hand and rested it there.  "Feel it?" he said.  "Right about there?"

Marguerite's fingertips felt the rapid beating of the wolf's heart.  "Yes, I can."

"That's the best place for the bullet, the least collateral damage."  Marguerite's shaky smile acknowledged the instruction.  She couldn't tear her eyes away from the wolf.

Challenger stood up, opened a long, scaly leather case and handed a syringe to Malone.  With its wicked four-inch needle, the syringe looked more deadly weapon than salvation.  "Ned, thanks for helping me out here.  Milady said she'd lose courage if … if Bruiser didn't make it.  So she and the General are waiting for me over there.  You understand what to do?  Just as soon as Marguerite fires and Bruiser stops breathing, follow the bullet wound with the syringe and empty it in his heart -- the whole thing, as fast as you can.  Okay?"

Malone's weak smile mirrored Marguerite's.  "Not so okay, but I understand."

Challenger left them and walked to the second, larger campfire where Milady, General Gengal and his soldiers waited for a miracle or a mass cremation.

Full night had fallen in the two hours since Marguerite had acquiesced to Challenger's experimental cure.  A hot meal had been served, and although none of the Humans had had an appetite, apparently Lizards could always eat.  Both Milady and General Gengal had dined heartily, the General feeding Milady bite by bite since she no longer had any hands.

While the cooking fire was still burning hot enough to boil water, Challenger had borrowed the Lizard's coffee pot and sterilized his syringes – a step he'd felt necessary "just in case."  Just in case what, Challenger hadn't said.

Malone squatted down next to Marguerite and Bruiser.  Malone hadn't quite given up on saving Marguerite from her stubborn self.  He made his offer once again.  "Look, you shouldn't be the one to do it.  You'll never forgive yourself if Challenger's serum doesn't work.  Let me pull the trigger."

Marguerite sat on the ground her legs spread out, Bruiser sitting in between.  The huge wolf actually sat taller than Marguerite and his head over-shadowed hers.  Having taken off Bruiser's collar, she worked her fingers through the thick neck fur.  To Malone, Marguerite's forceful massage looked almost painful.  A too-bright smile quivered on her lips.  "Thank you, noble sir, but if … if Bruiser dies, I want to be the last thing he sees.  He loves me and I love him."  She paused and looked into the wolf's eyes, into pupils that looked nearly black in the campfire light.  "And if I can forgive myself for killing Roxton, what's a wolf?"

Veronica sat on a Lizard blanket by their small campfire.  Poking at the smoky flames with a stick, she said in a low voice, "You didn't kill Roxton, Marguerite.  His luck ran out, that's all.  It was pure damned bad luck.  I'm sure that's what he'd tell you if he could."

"Veronica, I … I can't … you don't … "  Marguerite stopped trying to get out impossible words.  Her fingers rubbed Bruiser's favorite spot behind an ear.  His cold, dry nose dipped down and caressed her cheek.

Marguerite knew what Roxton would have told her.  She could hear him in her head:  _Don't turn away from your friends, Marguerite._  She tried again.  "Thanks, Veronica."  She took a deep breath for courage.  "Really, thanks … little sister."

Marguerite and Veronica: the two ends of the spectrum, the dark and the fair, the wily and the blunt – they smiled at each other across Bruiser's furry back.

Challenger's lecture voice had been drifting from the other side of the glade.  The General, an automatic pistol in his hand, responded, "So, I pull the slide to get the first bullet in the firing chamber?  Then what?"  Challenger was teaching the General the best way to kill Milady.

In a sudden movement, Bruiser stood up and moved away.  He shook himself vigorously and began to pant.

It was nearly time.

Marguerite held up a hand and with a surge of his young muscles, Malone pulled her to her feet.  He hugged her quickly around the shoulders and whispered in her ear, "We're all praying for him."

Next to Malone, Veronica stood holding the syringe, its long needle pointing up; a bead of moisture wobbled on the end.  Veronica handed the syringe back to Malone.  With Malone's weapon ready, it was time for Marguerite to draw hers.

Roxton's nickel-plated revolver felt heavy in Marguerite's hand.  She'd killed her first man with a revolver -- a little misunderstanding about the Great War.  She'd wanted England to win – the dead man hadn't.  Breaking the pistol open, she checked the cylinder.  Every chamber held an unfired cartridge.  She clicked it back.

No more delays.  Across the glade the General and Milady faced each other, Milady low to the ground due to the bent avian limbs.  The General stood over her, his pistol to her chest.  Her bent wing caressed the General's shaking arm.  They were talking quietly.  Marguerite could see Milady's lips moving but she couldn't hear the words.

"Bruiser, over here, boy.  Sit here in front of me."  The dire wolf walked in stiff, deliberate motions, his large feet stirring up little puffs of dust.  To Marguerite the whole thing seemed unreal.  Bruiser sat on the exact spot where Marguerite's finger pointed.  His steady eyes looked up to hers.  _It's time, Marguerite.  Do it._

Standing next to Marguerite, Malone had the syringe ready in his hand.  He nodded when she glanced his way, his expression sober.

Two of Veronica's finger's curled an "O" around Malone's gold pocket watch.  She would time Bruiser's recovery.  After the injection, he had four minutes to start breathing again, no more.

Marguerite put the gun to Bruiser's chest.  At this range the bullet would go completely through him and out his back.  With a shaking thumb Marguerite pulled back on the pistol's hammer spur.  Damn!  She'd killed human beings with less concern.  But if Challenger's idea didn't work … if Bruiser didn't recover ... it would be, would be …  But Bruiser was only a pet, wasn't he?  Just a pet?

Marguerite's finger hovered over the trigger.  Bruiser's eyes held hers.  The dire wolf sat steady as rock.

There'd been another time, here on the plateau in a robber's camp, when Marguerite had looked over a gun and into calm eyes just like these.  Those eyes had belonged to a man waiting for a death he didn't deserve, a death she would deliver.  When she'd looked into that man's familiar deep green eyes, the eyes hadn't looked away.  Or accused.  Or feared.

Across the glade the General's gun popped.  The sound startled Marguerite.  Her finger tightened convulsively.  The revolver kicked in her hand, its loud report echoing the other gun.  Blood sprayed from Bruiser's exit wound, and the impact of the large bullet knocked him on his back.  All four legs spasmed twice, then the wolf lay still.  No breath, no movement, no life.  He was dead.

Malone dived down with the syringe, pushed it straight into Bruiser's chest wound and depressed the plunger.  Marguerite threw the gun away and joined him at Bruiser's side.  Her lips moved and asked the still form a silent one-word question: "John?"

Veronica held the pocket watch with the crystal face tipped towards the campfire.  The firelight gleamed on the second hand ticking inexorably around the dial.  Malone whispered, "How long?"

"Three minutes, forty-five seconds."  Malone pulled Veronica's head close to his and kissed her tenderly.  The shifting flames of the fire glimmered on Veronica's golden hair, and sparked her eyes.  Keeping his eyes on those sparks, Malone spoke to Marguerite.  "It's been four minutes, Marguerite.  Bruiser's gone.  I'm sorry."

Over by the other campfire, Milady's recovery had already initiated, her heart having begun beating again almost immediately.  Her feathers were falling out, her skin returning to Lizard scales and her bones straightening up.  The General and Challenger exchanged excited laughs.  The soldiers whooped.  The Lizards celebrated.

Marguerite knelt by Bruiser's body, her back turned to the revelers.  She couldn't bear to watch the happiness on the other side of the glade.  Her hands stroked through Bruiser's thick fur, trying to detect some change, a tiny movement, any sign for hope.  She didn't answer Malone.  What the boy didn't know wouldn't hurt him.  He didn't ever need to know that they'd just killed John Roxton.

Malone glanced at Veronica, who read his intention in his eyes and nodded her consent.  "We're going over to see how Milady's doing.  Come with us."  Veronica picked up the Lizard blanket from the ground, shook it free of grass and started to cover up Bruiser's body.

Stopping her, Marguerite pushed the blanket down past the wolf's ribs, until she could see the gaping exit wound in his back.  If he were to heal, it should start there.  "I'm … I'm going to stay by him for awhile and say goodbye.  You go ahead.  I'll catch you up."

As Malone and Veronica's footsteps swished through the grass, Marguerite's hand stroked the still body on the ground.  She talked to it quietly, but her voice held a note of determination.  "I'm not going accept this, John.  You can't leave me again.  Not when I've just found you."  The silent body didn't respond.

The Lizards had begun to sing a silly ditty about the General and his lady and what they'd soon do in bed.  The joyful noise grated in Marguerite's heart.

Marguerite took a long wolf ear and rubbed it with her thumb.  "You heard Jadna's mother.  You have to come to me when I call -- so consider yourself called.  Now come back, you hear me?  John?  John!"  Her voice had gotten a little louder, but the body remained still.

If there were a God in Heaven, surely He'd listen to her.  Marguerite's head tilted to the sky and she begged.  "Please, God, send him back.  I need him more than you."  God wasn't listening.

The raucous Lizard singing increased several decibels.  Marguerite glanced over her shoulder.  No one looked her way.  The story of her life:  No one listened.  No one cared.  And every time she found something to believe in, it disappeared.  "Damn you, Roxton!  Damn you!"  Fisting her hands together Marguerite hit the wolf's ribs as hard as she could.  "Damn you!"  Another hit.  "Damn you!"  And another.  "Damn, damn, damn …"  Her voice trailed off as tears choked her throat.  Marguerite's head bent to the furry neck.  The anger had fled as quickly as it had come.  She whispered a last apology, a farewell.  "Oh, John, I'm sorry."

Under Marguerite's forehead the wolf's neck twitched and she heard a rushing sound as air filled the lungs.  The wolf's body had begun to breathe.

Marguerite straightened.  Her hands went to the dire wolf's broad chest.  It lifted and fell, stopped and started.  The black throat rippled as the wolf tried to swallow, choked and coughed.  He struggled for air.

"John, take it easy.  Don't fight it.  Just let it come."  The gasping eased.  "There, that's good.  Just little breaths."  She stroked the wolf's black cheek.

Could she believe this?  Was this truth?  Had John come back to her?  Had Challenger's kill-or-cure actually worked?  Marguerite began to shake.  Leaning over the wolf's back she studied the ugly exit wound.  Yes, it had grown smaller.  While she watched, it disappeared.  Rocking back on her heels, she pushed on a heavy shoulder.  The other wound had closed.

Marguerite's hands knotted in the wolf's fur.  "Oh God!"

"Whoop! Woo-hoo!"

Once on a trip out west Malone had seen an Apache war dance.  Those Apaches had been staid compared to Challenger tonight.  He hopped and jumped around the large campfire with total abandon, every once in a while grabbing a Lizard for a jig.  Challenger was lucky Summerlee wasn't there.  The Professor would never live down a report of this to the London Zoological Society.

Veronica smiled and nudged Malone.  They reclined side by side not far from General Gengal and Milady.  "Challenger's going to be impossible to live with now, isn't he?"

"No, he'll be okay.  He'll calm down in a minute," Malone answered.  He nodded toward the other, sadder campfire.  "He still has to live with Marguerite."

They could see Marguerite sitting by the blanket-covered body of the wolf.  Her dark knot of hair hung unmoving on her back.  Her shoulders curled forward and her head bowed down.  She seemed to pray.

Malone had been trying to keep an eye on Marguerite, but what with the Lizard celebration and Challenger's excited antics it'd been hard.

Acknowledging with a sigh the truth of what Malone had said, Veronica ran her hand down his arm and laid it on top of his.  "Maybe we should go get her.  She's been over there alone with him for quite a while."

With a shake of his head, Malone disagreed.  "Not just yet.  Goodbyes can take a while, and she's not just saying goodbye to Bruiser, you know."  Malone gave Veronica's hand a squeeze.  "She needs time to close that door and move on."

"You are finished, Roxton.  You know that, don't you?  Scaring all of us like that.  They'll be queuing up for chance to pin your hide to the wall.  But I've got news for you:  They're all out of luck because I'm first in line, and there won't be _anything_ left when I'm done."  As she whispered, Marguerite's thumb caressed Roxton's beardless jaw.  She didn't know if he'd heard, but she needed to talk, to let him know she was there.

The fire had burned down quite a bit, but it didn't matter.  Marguerite saw enough to know that, like the Phoenix, Lord John Roxton arose from the wolf.

The metamorphosis had been disturbing to watch.  The fur had gone first, the skin sort of sucking it in, until he only had hair in the usual place on top of his head – longer than the last time Marguerite had seen it, but normal, curly and dark brown, not black.  Roxton didn't even have his usual five days worth of beard.  Then his legs and arms had elongated and his chest flattened.  There'd been pops and snaps as the joints swiveled and reformed.  His skull had rounded and the muzzle disappeared.  That had been the worst.  To watch his face emerge had suggested werewolf legends, only in reverse.

Mercifully, Roxton's eyes had stayed closed throughout it all.

The tip of Marguerite's little finger ran along one of Roxton's high, flat cheekbones then stroked the baby soft skin above his eye.  _Come on, John, open up.  Look at me._

Marguerite let her mouth run on.  "Well, Challenger might be just a little happy to have you back.  He doesn't much care for the father role."  She jerked her head towards the other campfire.  "He's over there pretending he's just won the Nobel Prize."  She paused.  "I suppose he deserves one.  Well, to be honest, by now he deserves at least a dozen of them.  Alfred Nobel has nothing on George Challenger."

On the back of her finger Marguerite felt the delicate butterfly brush of Roxton's eyelash.  A thin slit of eye opened up.  The tip of Roxton's tongue hesitantly emerged and explored the outside of his lips.  His voice croaked but achieved no words.

Marguerite's hand flew down to Roxton's struggling mouth.  "Don't try to talk yet, John.  I think the serum's still working."

Roxton never would listen to her.  He continued to try and she caught half a word, "Huh … huh …"

"How long were you gone?"  Roxton nodded then groaned.  The movement must have hurt right down to his feet.  His back arched as he fought the pain.  Marguerite held him down and the spasm quieted, but his face continued to contort.  Roxton needed something to take his mind elsewhere so Marguerite answered his question.  "I don't know.  Five minutes, I think.  You'll have to tell Challenger his time allowance was a little short."

"I will."  This time Roxton had formed words, but she could tell the effort had hurt.

If Marguerite spoke, Roxton wouldn't; and one thing Marguerite seldom ran out of was words.  She put her mouth in high gear.  "Well, I'm sorry it's just me to welcome you back.  Malone and Veronica drifted off after your four minutes ran out.  And Challenger's over there whooping it up with Milady and the General."  The familiar eyebrows lifted in question.  "Yes, Milady's fine.  She's more than fine.  I'm not sure she and the General are going to wait for benefit of clergy."

Roxton made a gentle snorting sound, something stronger than an exhale, but not by much.  He licked his lips and swallowed.  "How did you know I was the wolf?  I could see it in your eyes when you pulled the trigger:  You knew."  Three whole sentences this time – a quantum leap in recovery.  One of Roxton's large square hands reached out, swallowed up one of hers and squeezed.  Roxton was gaining strength with every passing second.

"I'm not sure how.  I just knew.  I mean after hundreds of lifetimes, I should know you pretty well, right?"

"Right."  Roxton's hand tugged on hers.  "Help me up."

"Oh no, you don't.  Not yet."  Marguerite pushed his hand down to the ground and held it there, her fingers tucked inside of his.  Patience had never been Roxton's long suit, but he let her pin him down.  "Just wait, Lord Roxton.  You and I, we've got a lifetime now."

FINIS.

**All good things must come to an end.  (Common folk saying.)**

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;  
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:  
And so make life, death, and that vast forever  
One grand sweet song.

**From A Farewell by Ben Kingsley**

**(Please see the next "Author's Comments" chapter for information about proposed sequel.)**


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